Avram Patt, general manager of Washington Electric Co-op and promoter of erecting 26 400-ft wind turbines in Sheffield and Sutton against the wishes of those communities, wrote (Caledonian Record, May 2) to clarify that renewable energy certificates (the tradeable "packaging" of such energy sources, sold in addition to the actual energy) will not allow coal plants in the midwest to continue polluting.

He says that the RECs "generated" by the Sheffield/Sutton wind plant would stay in New England. That is, they would allow only New England coal plants to continue polluting.

And despite Patt's irrelevant discourse on the difference between REC and cap-and-trade systems, the charge still stands that the primary driver of investment (and interest by utilities) in large-scale wind power is the potential profits from REC trading in a tight market.

That's why Enron invented them.