Environment:ElectricitySupply
From AshWiki
Collated from Tom's research (with interpolations by Mark):
Contents |
Electricity Suppliers
The two best appear to be Ecotricity and Good Energy.
Costs
Ecotricity will match our current bills. Though we can pay a little more (£20 they claim) for a tariff with more green electricity.
Good Energy say that "the additional cost ... is around £2 a week". More details (pdf) including Standing Charge is 13.09 p/day and a Unit is 15.92 p/kWh (for Eastern Region).
Currently we are with XXX who charge YYY
Ecotricity
Ecotricity are by far the bestest supplier around (er, perhaps; but see "Another view" below) in terms of how much cash they put into building new renewable capacity; they compete on this with companies that have 100 times their customers. So that's nice. They also offer a 100% green tariff.
Where they differ from some other green suppliers is that they don't supply 100% green energy unless we pay a little extra for it - they reckon an extra 20 quid per household per year on average. On their slightly cheaper (fixed at market rate) normal tariff, they make up the shortfall in their own ability to supply by buying random dirty energy from others. However they somehow match all their income in new wind turbine investment to increase their capacity compared to others - 555 quid per customer in 2007, as opposed to 2-17 quid from larger companies, and 0 from other green energy "suppliers" who look like they're actually just resellers for other companies, so eventually they should SORT IT OUT and cover the place in wind turbines and David Bellamy will be seen hanging off one by his tie, eyes bulging with rage.
I'd like us to go with them on the green tariff, because then we get maximum investment in renewables along with a clean conscience.
http://www.whichgreen.org/compare_green_energy_suppliers/green_gauge_energy_league_table/
P.S. the whichgreen site is run by Ecotricity so not to be taken without sodium supplements
Comparison with Good Energy
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/uknow/features/?id=80
more on suppliers in general, suggesting it's between Good Energy and Ecotricity...
Ecotricity are cheaper, invest directly in renewables, and supply a mix of green and brown energy, becoming ever-greener.
Good Energy only supply green energy, use some of their money making renewables more attractive economically, and the owning group invests the profits in renewables.
so, not cut and dried, however both pretty good especially alongside the rest of the fuckers.
Another view
Ecotricity's claim to be better because they "invest" in green energy is basically bogus -- in fact this piece of deceit is one reason I don't like them so much. It's true that Ecotricity build their own wind farms. However, Good Energy use the same money to buy green energy, thus supporting small local wind suppliers and encouraging the development of new ones -- such as this wind co-op who are one of their suppliers (and whose agreement with Good Energy led to their being able to get the loan from the Co-op Bank with which they were built). And, as noted above, their profits are directly invested in renewables.
- Tom: how is Ecotricity's claim bogus? As I understand it they spend all their profits building wind farms. Are they lying?
Caveats
There are two real problems with green tariffs:
1. Whoever you get your electricity from, when you turn on your 3kw toaster, the output from a coal or gas fired station goes up by 3kw, and releases the corresponding amount of CO2. This is because you can't control the output from renewables. In other words, your marginal rate of carbon-based electricity usage is still 100%.
2. All suppliers are obliged anyway to provide a certain amount of renewable energy -- when they do they get "renewable obligation certificates" (ROCs), and they need a certain quantity of these depending how much they produce in total. You might assume this is in addition to the green electricity produced by green companies, but it is not: they can and do sell their ROCs to other energy companies. They could opt instead to "retire" their ROCs, but of course, this would cost money, so ... In fact Good Energy retire 10% of their ROCs. Ecotricity don't retire any.
- Tom: I don't see this as a problem with green tariffs, it's just a sad fact. Sure it does mean that people can't say "my kettle doesn't affect the planet now". I don't see how it changes the fact that all the cash we pay for power could be going into building wind farms, rather than doing whatever our power company does with it. I like the idea of our cash doing that.
Useful recent Grauniad article on green tariffs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/23/energy
More in the comments on David Mackay's excellent blog:
http://withouthotair.blogspot.com/2008/10/good-article-on-green-electricity.html
Like him I've been with Good Energy for years, not that I'm convinced it makes much difference to anything.
Solar PV generation
For the question of whether solar PV cells ever make back their embedded energy, this report says that they do, in between 1 and 5 years. From an Australian site.
