Lights out for Green Power

Green Power--alternative energy sources from non-fossil fuels--may be the wave of the future, but experience in Los Angeles is showing that customers are not willing to pay more to protect the environment:

Today, fewer than 2 percent of the DWP's customers are signed up for the Green Power Program, and the number is declining, although millions of dollars was spent to market it, using the controversial contracts with the public relations firms of Fleishman-Hillard and the Lee Andrews Group.

Since it was launched in 1999, the program has been the subject of glowing national press coverage -- and stinging internal audits, which found that the conservation effort included more than $4.8 million in marketing costs.

Enrollment in the program has dropped from a peak of nearly 100,000 of the DWP's 1.4 million electricity customers to about 27,000 today.

Credit cleaner-burning natural gas which packs more environmentally and economically-friendly power to the punch.