Please mark your calendar for NEM's Fall Leadership Roundtable on October 18-20, 2010, in Harrisburg, PA. The conference will take place at the Hilton Harrisburg on One North Second Street. You may register for the Fall Meeting in Harrisburg at this hotlink.

Our Annual Winter Executive Committee Meeting is scheduled for January 17-19, 2011, in Miami at the famous Doral Hotel and Resort. Many Thanks to Doug Marcille, Vice Chair of NEM’s Executive Committee and CEO of US Gas and Electric for hosting this upcoming Executive Committee Meeting.

FTC issued proposed revisions to its Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims (Green Guides) for comment.

The proposed revisions would provide that:

"• Marketers should not make unqualified general environmental benefit claims. They are difficult, if not impossible, to substantiate. (The current Guides state that marketers can make unqualified claims if they can substantiate all express and implied claims. Otherwise, they should qualify the claim.)
• Qualifications should be clear and prominent, and should limit the claim to a specific benefit. Marketers should ensure the advertisement’s context does not imply deceptive environmental claims. (In the current Guides, this guidance appears only in examples.)

. . .

• Marketers should not make unqualified renewable energy claims if the power used to manufacture any part of the product was derived from fossil fuels.
• Marketers should qualify claims by specifying the source of renewable energy (e.g., wind or solar). Additionally, marketers should qualify claims if less than all, or virtually all, of the significant manufacturing processes involved in making the product/package were powered with renewable energy or conventional energy offset by renewable energy certificates (“RECs”).
• Marketers that generate renewable energy (e.g., by using solar panels), but sell RECs for all of the renewable energy they generate, should not represent that they use renewable energy.
Carbon Offsets
• Marketers should have competent and reliable scientific evidence to support their carbon offset claims, including using appropriate accounting methods to ensure they are properly quantifying emission reductions and are not selling those reductions more than once.
• Marketers should disclose if the offset purchase funds emission reductions that will not occur for two years or longer.
• Marketers should not advertise a carbon offset if the activity that forms the basis of the offset is already required by law."

FTC also requested comment on specific questions related to the Green Guide revisions:

"How, and under what circumstances, should marketers qualify “made with renewable energy” claims to avoid deception?
a. Does disclosing the source of the renewable energy adequately qualify the claim and prevent deceptive implications that the advertised product is made with renewable or recycled materials? Why or why not? Are there other disclosures that would adequately qualify a “made with renewable energy” claim? Please describe such disclosures. Please also provide any relevant consumer perception evidence.
b. Should the Commission advise marketers to qualify a “made with renewable energy” claim if the advertised product is not made entirely with renewable energy? If so, should marketers qualify such claims if all or virtually all significant processes used in making a product are powered by renewable energy? Why or why not? Please provide any relevant consumer perception evidence.
17. How do consumers understand “carbon offset” and “carbon neutral” claims? Is there any evidence of consumer confusion concerning the use of these claims? Please provide any relevant consumer perception evidence.
18. How should marketers qualify carbon offset claims, if at all, to avoid deception about the timing of emission reductions? Should marketers disclose if their offsets reflect emission reductions that are not scheduled to occur in two years? Should marketers make a disclosure if emission reductions are not scheduled to occur in some other time period? If so, what time period, and why? Would such a disclosure adequately qualify an offset claim to avoid deception? Please provide any relevant consumer perception evidence about this issue or on carbon offsets, generally."

Comments are due December 10, 2010. The full texts of the Proposed Green Guide Revisions and Summary of Proposed Revisions are available on the NEM Website.