Over the past two weeks, numerous news outlets and blogs have erroneously claimed that Las Vegas is the first city to relying solely on renewable energy.

 “Las Vegas now runs completely on renewable energy,” USA Today proclaimed in its headline. Huffington Post also picked up the story, announcing, “The so-called 'City of Sin' is now squeaky clean, at least in one regard — as of last week, Las Vegas is powered entirely by green energy.” Mic, Yahoo, True Activist, ClimateWire, and myriad others also reported this claim.

 It’s not true. In reality, Las Vegas’s big news is that its entire city government—not the city itself—is now green.

 Forbes contributor Robert Rapier does some expert debunking of this much-hyped claim.

Although it is true that Las Vegas is installing a lot of new solar power, and the state of Nevada is home to over 500 megawatts (MW) of geothermal power — the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that the 3.3 million megawatt hours (MWh) that Nevada generated in September 2016 came primarily (>70%) from natural gas.

Of course that’s for the entire state of Nevada, but nearly three-quarters of the state’s population lives in or around Las Vegas. With natural gas generating four times the electricity of renewables for the state, it isn’t mathematically possible for Las Vegas to be running entirely on renewables. Per EIA data Las Vegas runs primarily on natural gas.

… as with the game of telephone someone misinterpreted “City of Las Vegas” as “city of Las Vegas”, and that ultimately became “Las Vegas is powered entirely by renewable energy.” Thus, a new energy myth was born.

That heavy natural gas usage is good news for the environment; keep in mind that this particular traditional energy source is far less carbon-intensive than alternatives like coal.

But there’s a bigger point here. Amid the left’s freakout about fake news, this falsity gained little attention. But especially with an incoming administration that’s likely to radically revise America’s energy policies, it’s important to get the facts right.

Rapier explains why:

If we are to adopt sensible energy policies, it is important not to create unrealistic expectations by creating energy myths. In this case, many will now falsely believe that a major U.S. city is running entirely on renewable power, as a result of irresponsible reporting and a failure to check facts.