Any suppliers who don’t use Russian energy

alexander15

Hi

Does anyone know if there are any energy suppliers who do not use any Russian energy? If there are I would very much like to switch to them.

Robin9

As others have said the energy that you get - gas and electric - is a mix of gas/nuclear , wind etc. You can't avoid it.

What you can do is avoid Russian companies if you like .

Astria

When you switch providers they all use the same pipework so you can't avoid or obtain energy from any particular provider.

If you were a big company you may have more options but residential is typically one pipe so you get what you get. 

Ultrasonic

One thing I guess we could all potentially do would be to try to use less energy. The less energy used across Europe the easier it might be for leaders to decide to stop buying Russian gas.

UnclaimedEnergy

Due to the sheer size of them, most energy suppliers will currently have forward-trades with Gazprom for gas delivery over the next year or 2.  A lot of these trades were likely made in 2021.

However, most, if not all UK suppliers are now looking to move away from doing trades with Gazprom (E.On were quoted in financial times).

Ignore the 'it's all 1 pipe bleh' as that's too narrow minded thinking for what you likely want to know. Although it may all be 1 pipe, you can decide where your money ends up and reduce how much goes to Russia by looking for a supplier who don't have any energy trades with Gazprom.

MWT

UnclaimedEnergy said:

..you can decide where your money ends up and reduce how much goes to Russia by looking for a supplier who don't have any energy trades with Gazprom.

That may also be 'too narrow' as you are assuming that the only way to end up with Russian gas is to trade directly with Gazprom.

Very unlikely that the smaller suppliers in particular, are dealing direct on the wholesale market.

doodling

Hi,

UnclaimedEnergy said:

Ignore the 'it's all 1 pipe bleh' as that's too narrow minded thinking for what you likely want to know. Although it may all be 1 pipe, you can decide where your money ends up and reduce how much goes to Russia by looking for a supplier who don't have any energy trades with Gazprom.

The simple facts are a) that the UK is not self sufficient in gas and b) the UK relies on electricity from gas to balance the national grid.

Yes, you can attempt to go to a supplier who doesn't in turn have a supplier who doesn't in turn have a supplier that contracts with Russian gas suppliers but all you will achieve is arranging for a different customer to use those suppliers.

As I have observed before, trying to claim non-use of a particular form of energy when taking power from the national grid is akin to claiming that beef stew is vegetarian if you remove the lumps of beef before it is served.

The only things that might significantly reduce our usage of Russian gas are:
1) A major building programme of alternative dispatchable generation (of which nuclear seems to be the only vaguely acceptable option).
2) A major reduction in demand for electricity.
3) A major increase in LNG imports.
4) A major increase in exploitation of any existing gas reserves we have.

Of all the above (3) is probably the easier to achieve in the short term but it should be noted that all of these are multi-tens-of-billion pound endeavours.  If Putin cuts off gas supply then there is a risk, albeit very small, that we might achieve (2) involuntarily. 

UnclaimedEnergy

Russian gas only makes up 5% of the gas we import, so shouldn't be that much difficult to get away with it.
The issue though is that every european country is trying to do the same, causing prices for everything to now be even higher than December.

[Deleted User]

UnclaimedEnergy said:

Russian gas only makes up 5% of the gas we import, 

Not according to the industry expert on Radio 4 at lunchtime. He suggested, as we take a lot of gas from mainline Europe, that nobody can actually calculate how much Russian gas is used in the UK.

Verdigris

5% is the LNG we import from Russia. I'd been quoting 2-3%, which I think must be the estimate of what is mixed in with imports via pipeline from Begium and the Netherlands. So probably about 8% in total.

Gerry1

It's nonsense to say that it doesn't make any difference because it all comes from the 'national gasholder' or whatever.  That's like saying you'll be a money launderer if you deposit £1000 of legitimate cash with your bank because you'll get different coins and notes returned to you when you withdraw it next month, some of which may well have been deposited by a money launderer.

If 'the whole pot is tainted' idea were valid, you couldn't have suppliers offering cheaper kWh rates because you couldn't tell whether the electrons and molecules you're using were cheap ones or dear ones !  The system works on hypothecation, effectively there's a big 'gas cloud' with lots of input and output pipes, ditto a big 'electricity cloud' with lots of input and output wires.  Providing all the accounting systems work correctly, you could theoretically buy only pure Norwegian hydo electricity.

That said, in reality it's probably difficult or impossible to avoid using some percentage of Russian energy because few if any domestic suppliers will have a contract that buys all their energy from just one or two 'pure' sources.

You might just about be able to invest in a portfolio that doesn't include tobacco or armaments (although your returns will probably be lower), but ethical energy is a bit of a unicorn.  Even buying green energy often turns out to be little more than green-washing.