Renewable Electricity Suppliers

martinpike

I'm currently with Good Energy, who provide 100% renewable energy right now. I've read up a little on the renewable energy supply market, and it seems to me that Ecotricity are the only other 'true green' supplier, although their approach is to supply largely 'normal' electricity now, but to invest all profits into creating new green capacity for tomorrow.

Good Energy is more expensive than your local supplier - Ecotricity will match your local supplier in terms of cost.

Who are you all with, and how did you choose?

martinpike

Hmmm. 24 reads, one Thank You and no replies?

If the original post came across as holier than thou, it wasn't intended to. I drive a car (albeit sparingly) and I flew to Spain a few weeks back for a holiday, so I'm hardly a saint.

Do most people simply go with the cheapest deal going? I certainly used to, and I'm thankful that I can afford to go green at the moment.

The purpose of the post was to see if others had an opinion on whether my decision to choose Good Energy over Ecotricity was the best choice in terms of encouraging new green capacity.

Hereward

In the electricity market you cannot get energy from a 100% green source unless you generate it yourself. This is because the supplier does not know exactly where the energy you are receiving comes from. All green energy supplies agree to purchase the equivalent amount of green electricity as the amount you use; therefore it does not really matter which green supplier you choose, as long as you choose one of them.

martinpike

I'll clarify. For every unit of electricity that I use, Good Energy generate a unit of renewable energy and stick it into the national grid.

The point of the post was to try and debate the best way to encourage new renewable capacity. I am unsure whether the Good Energy strategy or the Ecotricity strategy (or someone elses that I don't know of) best achieves this objective and would welcome opinions on it.

I'm afraid it's a slightly more complex subject than Hereward states. The renewable market generates certificates called ROC's and LEC's, which can then be traded between green and non-green suppliers.

Whilst I understand the basics of this scheme, I'm no economist and will happily listen to arguments from others.

Ken68

I go for the cheapest supplier, altho more prompted recently with dissatisfaction of one of the BIG BOYS.
I would sooner do my own green thing, routing it thru someone else, is open to abuse.
Bike more, bus more, soon no car at all. Grow own veg, forage , don't buy food miles stuff. That sort of thing. That way I am in control.

albreda

We're with Ecotricity because none of the other green sources matched what we felt to be most important - i.e. investing money back into renewable energy. You may be interested to read this;

http://www.ecotricity.com/acrobat/JeremySmith_articleJune05.pdf

martinpike

Good for you Ken. I agree that reducing what you use underpins pretty much everything discussed on this board.

I don't disagree with your slight cynicism that if you do pay a premium for green electricity, it's open to abuse. That's what I'm getting at here. A lot of the schemes seem to promise to invest into a fund which will research the viability of renewable energy etc etc bla bla bla.

I'm trying to identify the best choice to make something real happen as quickly as possible.

penrhyn

I'm in the process of changing to Equipower/Gas who make no environmental claims for their energy,( it comes from Scottish and Southern) but they do offer the opportunity to offset your carbon emmissions through Equiclimate. (though I'm not currently planning to subscribe to this just now).

martinpike

albreda wrote:

We're with Ecotricity because none of the other green sources matched what we felt to be most important - i.e. investing money back into renewable energy. You may be interested to read this;

http://www.ecotricity.com/acrobat/JeremySmith_articleJune05.pdf

Yeah, I'm an Ecologist subscriber, and that article made my blood boil. It simply fails to acknowledge that Ecotricity are achieving their investment rates in renewables by providing 'normal' electricity. It's a bit like feeding a vegetarian on meat, on the basis you'll grow veggies for them next year!

I have no problem with what Ecotricity are doing, as they are clearly committed to investing in new renewable capacity, but for such an article to 'overlook' the simple facts was unforgiveable to me.

I gave the Ecologist quite a hard time over it, especially as it coincided with their flagship electricity advertiser changing from Good Energy to Ecotricity. I also notice that Jeremy Smith no longer works for them.

SaverSarah_2

I'm surprised this thread has only been viewed 68 times. There must be more of us using renewable energy suppliers on the green and ethical board?

We're also with Good Energy, the only supplier of 100% renewable energy. We pay exactly the same each month as we were paying British Gas, because we timed our switch with lots of energy saving measures like switching everything off standby, banning use of the tumble drier (that was a biggie!) and replacing every standard lightbulb with a low-energy equivalent.

Before we switched, someone asked me who I got my electricity from. When I told them we were supplied by BG, they asked why I was paying my electricity supplier to contribute to global warming.

They had a point!

We looked into it in a lot of detail before switching, read the excellent Friends of the Earth report (just looked for it on their website but couldn't find it. It's there somewhere...) In the meantime, their climate pages are informative:

http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/issues/green_energy/

There was a really excellent article on the subject a couple of months ago in New Consumer – did anyone else see it? It interviewed the chief exec/founder in each case and compared their ethos.

From what I've heard – but I may be wrong – Ecotricity have two tariffs. One which is very renewable and expensive, and this is the tariff on which they get their best green write-ups, the other, on which they offer the price match, only supplies a small percentage of renewable energy to the grid. Put me straight if that's not the case, they might not do this any more.

There's also another company called Green Energy (http://www.nef.org.uk/greenenergy/index.htm) but I don't know much about them. I think they were the third company compared in the New Consumer article.

I'm with the previous poster who said it's better to switch to any renewable supplier than to stay put with the fat cats, but I still think it's worth looking into if you're serious about it.

But hey – even if you switch to Juice from npower, at least you've done something... it all helps to send the right messages to 'those in power' (pun fully intended) that we're fed up with dirty energy.

kiwichick

GREAT THREAD!

I just signed up to the Juice with nPower&Greenpeace 2 days ago. I thought I was doing a good thing going for the green energy option, it didn't occur to me to look for fully renewable energy. I will look into the suppliers mentioned by previous posters with serious intent to change, luckily I am within my "cooldown" period with nPower.

Many thanks for this thread.
Al.