We use it almost every minute of the day. We can’t hear it, see it or smell it – and although we can feel it, we certainly wouldn’t want to. In today’s modern world, electricity has become a vital commodity. Whether at work or at home virtually everyone in the country is reliant on lots of electrons buzzing around and generating electricity.
Since the days of Franklin and Faraday, electricity generation has been hailed as one of mankind’s greatest inventions. But in today’s world the generation of electricity holds many dark secrets….
Did you know that domestic electricity consumption accounts for a third of all the UK’s carbon emissions – the prime culprit in causing global warming. Not only that, some of our electricity generators and suppliers – ones that you may be signed up to – are responsible for emitting millions of tonnes of CO2 a year. Powergen, for instance, came top of the UK’s largest carbon emitters with a whopping 26.4 million tonnes, or, in other words, slightly more than Croatia!!
Off-grid or On-grid?
So how can you help make a difference and start changing where your electricity comes from? Generating your own renewable energy is becoming more and more popular, especially as we continue to see electricity prices climb and climb. In the purest sense, this can mean not actually being connected to the National Grid system and producing enough energy yourself to completely power your own home – this is known as being ‘off-grid’.
However, for most of us this isn’t a realistic option. Even if you do have a small rooftop wind turbine or an array of solar panels, it’s unlikely that they will produce enough energy all of the time to allow you to go ‘off-grid’. Anyway, if you are a microgenerator of renewable energy it’s quite good to be connected to the Grid and to have a supplier, so that when you produce more than you need for your own home, you can sell the rest back to your supplier.
Energy companies in the UK are obliged to supply their customers with a certain percentage of renewable energy, so they are often keen to buy excess renewable energy, even from small generators.
Renewable energy from your supplier
Suppliers are governed by what is known as the Renewable Obligation, which is set by the Government and means that suppliers have to provide their customers with an ever-increasing percentage of green electricity (at the moment that percentage is 7.9%). They do so on the premise that by buying it, consumers can reduce their carbon emissions. However, it’s market led and a bit misleading.
To meet this obligation, suppliers buy up green energy to bundle into 100% renewable tariffs. However, the UK only gets around 5% of its electricity from renewable sources… so where’s all that green coming from?
Well, what happens is that a small number of people now have a 100% renewable supply, but the rest of us are left with 0% renewable. All that's happening is a simple redistribution of supply, with little impact on climate change.
So whilst you yourself may not be polluting if you switch to 100% green, you are not necessarily doing a great deal to fight climate change if your supplier doesn’t invest your cash in green generation. The best way to make a difference is to choose a supplier building new renewable capacity, which replaces carbon-emitting forms of electricity generation like coal power.
Ecotricity’s Investment
Ecotricity is the ONLY UK supplier investing solely in building and generating 100% green electricity. Their investment per customer for new renewable energy construction is more than all the other UK suppliers put together.
And they’ve invested £25 million in the last twelve months alone in building new wind parks – that’s more than doubled their capacity.
To find out more about which suppliers are actually investing in building new renewable check out www.whichgreen.org
