Salt Lake County's mayor long has sought to green up the county. He has pushed everything from xeriscaping to hybrid cars to energy-efficient light bulbs.

Now, armed with a pool of progressive employees, Corroon has persuaded Utah's most-populous county to purchase a substantial bloc of wind power. After setting a summerlong environmental challenge - 120 county employees agreed to buy the alternative-energy source for their homes - the county has secured enough Blue Sky wind power to equal the effect of planting 230,000 trees a year.

"We were thrilled and excited to see that kind of dedication," says Ann Ober, the county's director of community relations about the employee response. "It's all about education. It's all about encouraging people to think about where their energy comes from."

More and more Utahns are getting the message, says Sara Baldwin, community-relations coordinator with the nonprofit Utah Clean Energy. Across the Beehive State, she notes, 17,000 people and 400 businesses have signed up for the energy alternative available through Rocky Mountain Power, formerly Utah Power.

Though the cost is noticeable - consumers pay roughly $13 more a month - wind power helps reduce coal dependency. That standard source accounts for 95 percent of Utah's power grid.

Baldwin explains the purchased clean energy blocs are supplied by wind farms located primarily on the Utah-Wyoming boundary outside Evanston.

"We see the Blue Sky wind-power program not only as a way to voice their choice, but it is simultaneously driving the demand for wind power across the grid," Baldwin says.

The wind-power campaign was launched several years ago in Moab, where 15 percent of residents now participate. It sailed quickly to Park City, which now nets 11 percent of its public.

In Salt Lake City, 1.8 percent of residents - or 12,789 customers - buy wind power. The city government buys 1,298 blocs of wind energy, offsetting the city's carbon emissions by 796 tons a year, according to Jordan Gate, the mayor's environmental adviser.

Corroon - along with his chief administrative officer, Doug Willmore - is on board. Each bought some of the 645 blocs the county will buy each month, enough to power 92 homes for a year.

Willmore notes the county's investment will have the same environmental benefit as not driving 2.5 million miles annually and removing 2.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

It is part of the first-term administration's environmental push, which includes a 23 percent cut in energy use at the County Government Center that Willmore says will save taxpayers $150,000 a year.

"We need to go beyond our broad macro-measures to find micro-measures," he says.

One example: the "Change A Light" campaign in which the county is partnering with Home Depot to offer discounts to anyone willing to switch to energy-efficient lights.

"We're trying to focus on the small things people can do in their homes that have a benefit both for the environment and for their pocketbooks," Ober says.

The county also installed solar panels in the Salt Palace addition and has swapped all its bulbs in traffic lights with the more-efficient "LED" signals.

As for wind, under the Blue Sky program, Baldwin vows, "This is only the beginning. The sky's the limit."

djensen@sltrib.com

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Tribune staff writer Heather May contributed to this report.