WILLIAM BRANGHAM:

From the moment his alarm goes off early in the morning, to shaving with an electric razor for the day ahead, longtime Burlington, Vermonter Stephen Conant — much like the rest of us — lives a life powered by electricity.

It powers his toaster, his coffeemaker, the fridge. But electricity matters even more to him at work, where hundreds of light bulbs at his lighting and metal fabrication company pull power from the electrical grid.

But just as his company strives to use reclaimed and renewable materials in its products and designs, some of which Conant himself occasionally welds, that ethos has been embraced by his city as well.

Burlington recently announced that it now produces or gets more power than its citizens use. And it's all coming from renewable sources of energy like wind and solar and hydroelectric.