Moving to green electricity
Posted by DavidM in Electricity, Family plan | 14 October 2007
My electricity and gas supply has been on a fixed discounted plan for the last year with Scottish Power. The plan ended in September and I decided it was time to go green.
I used uSwitch to identify plans available in my area of the UK and calcuate prices against my current spend.
I didn't specifically ask for green plans as I wanted to see the green versus non-green plans available. The first thing I noticed was that all the cheaper plans were non-green. Not a surprise but still a little disappointing. However, the cheapest green plans weren't too far down the list.
There are broadly two types of green electricity supply. Some plans commit to supplying their own or purchased renewable energy. So for every unit of electricity you use, one unit of green electricity is added to the grid.
The other type is where the supplier doesn't provide green power, but invests in projects that have a more or less direct impact on the environment.
I'm not a fan of off-setting other than to cancel out activities you can't reduce. Electricity generation is definitely an area where off-setting is a cop-out. Planting trees won't have a big immediate impact, whereas burning coal to light my house will.
So I was only interested in plans that offered to supply green electricity. Even here you have to be careful. For example, Green Energy UK +10 only supplies 10% more environmentally friendly energy than the statutory amount (15% in 2005), though they do offer another 100% renewable energy plan at a premium.
Of the 100% green energy plans nPower's Juice offers 100% renewable energy, mainly from their offshore wind farm, as well as contributing £10 to the Juice fund for marine and other renewable energy projects. nPower also sell solar panelling and have a microgeneration scheme where you can sell back your excess energy.
Ecotricity claim to be the world's first green electricity company. Their new Energy plan will provide 25% of your electricity from their own-generated power with the rest being renewable energy bought from other suppliers.
In the end I went with Scottish Power's Green Energy H2O Dual Fuel plan. As the name suggests they match my usage with electricity from hydro-electric stations. And as a special offer they'll even plant a tree!
My choice came down to two simple elements - staying with Scottish Power saved me the hassle of swapping supplier, and it was one of the cheapest 100% renewable schemes.
The choices available to you will depend on where you live but the encouraging thing is that there is starting to be real choice in the type of power you use and the prices are improving. While moving to green electricity is costing me 10% more than I was on before, it is the same as the standard tariff.
