Green electric - thoughts please

west_is_best

magyar wrote: »

Now if you've not got anything constructive to add, can I please suggest you shove off and disrupt some other thread.

Im only trying to be helpfull, obviously, its not what people want in this thread..

Please do not be rude to people, there is no point in it... we are here to help each other.

Im gone.

nommo

magyar wrote: »

Hmm... and interestingly... Ooh! Look who comes top!

Well magyar - I do also agree that 'spend per customer' isn't the best metric to judge 'greenness of supply', but total spend isn't either - especially when companies like Shell and Npower etc could build an offshore/onshore wind farm with small change left over from the shareholder's party... and no surprise that Ecotricity are top of their tree on the whichgreen site, but the information is accurate as far as I know.

Spend per customer at least highlights that some of the smaller companies are doing more than their fair share of new build. Which is the most important thing - new sources. I do agree that the whole energy supply sector and the way the grid works is in serious need of updating. Consumers are basically confused as to how to change the way we generate and consume our energy.

I do wonder why the big 6 (is it still 6?) are not building more wind farms.. too much profit in oil/coal still I presume.

magyar

nommo wrote: »

I do wonder why the big 6 (is it still 6?) are not building more wind farms.. too much profit in oil/coal still I presume.

It is still six. I agree with you that spend per customer is an interesting metric, I just think in this case it's ludicrously weighted towards Ecotricity.

In answer to your other points, then they're building them as fast as they possibly can. The bottleneck isn't money or desire, it's

a) the planning system, whereby NIMBY's can get local councils to block wind farm applications, and even the large sites (which are determined by the Govt) take up to two years to approve.

b) the supply market. Every country in the world wants wind turbines and this means prices have rocketed, and more importantly you can't even get them for quite a while. THis is catching up, but slowly.

Ecotricity's sites tend to be small 1 or 2 turbine schemes which are easier to get through the planning process.