Via Shutterstock

The D.C. government's agencies will be getting all of their electricity through wind power for at least a year, according to a news release from Washington Gas Energy Services. Under the terms of a new contract, the District will purchase all of its power needs from a Washington Gas-owned wind farm in Northern Virginia.

Previously, the D.C. government was getting 50 percent of its electricity through wind power, enough to place it at the top of an Environmental Protection Agency ranking of cities that rely on clean energy sources. The EPA's Green Power Community Challenge compares cities—including local governments and participating private organizations—by the amounts of wind, solar, biomass, and other renewable resources they use. Through last December 12, D.C. recorded more than 1 billion kilowatt hours of clean-energy usage. Hillsboro, Ore. was a distant second at 678.6 million kilowatt hours.

Of course, those raw numbers don't tell the full picture. Relative to its total consumption, D.C. gets 11.4 percent of its power from clean energy sources, according to the EPA.

Washington Gas Energy Services says that the amount of wind energy that the D.C. government will purchase is equivalent to removing 61,000 cars from the roads or reducing gasoline consumption by nearly 33 million gallons.

In addition to supplying wind power, the contract between D.C. and Washington Gas Energy Services also includes the creation of online dashboards for government facility managers to check on their energy consumption and a public website so that D.C. residents can view similar statistics.