In search of green electricity

Life can be pretty hectic at the Digest—we’ve been without an Editor-in-Chief for nearly five months and everyone’s feeling the extra workload—so, like Susan Saville in our article on page 56 of this month’s magazine, I may have been thinking about green energy but I certainly haven’t done anything about it. The planet will doubtless heave a sigh of relief that the Green Challenge has forced me into action.

And action, as I sit down to address the matter this Saturday afternoon, comes in the form of consulting energy price comparison websites. Going through our energy bills for the last year or so, I establish that we seem to have used 4,547 kilowatt hours of electricity and 24,860 kilowatt hours of gas (powering the combi boiler, oven and hob).

Is that a lot? We must benefit from the shoulder-to-shoulder insulation of living in a terraced house, and we keep the thermostat at 19 degrees C (it used to be 20 degrees but we recently made a conscious decision to turn it down). As for electricity, we have the usual appliances but we only run the washing machine and dishwasher when they are full and we don’t leave the TV or stereo on standby. OK, so one room of the house is filled by a small recording studio (one of my foibles) but I would like to point out that most of the equipment is not actually on for most of the time and doesn’t use much juice when it is—the whole room is powered from just one double wall socket.

Anyway, the first thing I discover is that I’ve actually been overspending. When energy was deregulated I switched, and have done again since, ending up getting my gas from Atlantic and my electricity from British Gas. But clearly I haven’t been keeping up: apparently the cheapest tariff for me now would actually be £220 a year less than I am paying! (Mind you, this seems to be a prediction based on current rates; according to my calculations I haven’t paid as much over the last year as the websites claim I’m paying. I guess this reflects recent rises in energy charges.)

OK, so let’s tear ourselves away from the cheapest tariffs and look at the green ones.

Looking at combined electricity and gas tariffs, the interweb comes up with Scottish Power’s H2O deal, which provides “100% green electricity from hydro-electric”. This will cost me but £5 a year more than I am paying… bearing in mind that I’m apparently paying £220 more than I need to. In a strange way, my own incompetence at keeping us on the most competitive tariff makes this all a lot easier—I could switch to a genuinely green tariff and not really notice the difference. True, I’d still be paying more than I have to, but a lot of the time this green malarkey boils down to the sacrifices you are willing to make to Do the Right Thing.

Actually, it’s a bit more than that—because there is also the question of what the Right Thing really is. I notice, for example, that if I leave my gas account as it is, and simply change my electricity to the H2O deal, I will actually save £38 compared to what I’m paying. What’s going on there? Why is there a premium for the gas part of the H2O tariff? Are some gas tariffs are greener than others? It seems they are—Southern Electric’s “Power 2 Nil Service Charge” tariff also offers 100% hydro electricity but further claims that gas usage is “partially offset through tree planting”. Hmm, “partially”. E-On’s “Go Green” tariff seems to offer both 100% renewable electricity and 100% carbon offset of gas usage through Climate Care (whatever that is).

And then you’ve got Ecotricity, a purely green supplier. Interestingly, they only claim to offer “at least 10%” green electricity. The deal with them is that they invest heavily in wind turbines and in fact invest more heavily per customer in green energy than any other supplier.

Which makes me wonder if wind turbine greenness is greener than hydro greenness. Ali tells me that she thinks hydro has been associated with damaging the environment through the building of dams, as least in some parts of the world. I don’t suppose that’s an issue in the UK but I start to wonder if there is some eco-legerdemain going on here. I mean, what if everyone in the country suddenly switched to a “100% hydro” tariff? Presumably there simply wouldn’t be the capacity. So, ultimately, would I be doing more good by signing up with Ecotricity, who invest in the future, even if only 10% of their juice is green now?

Before I make a decision, I’m going to go through these issues with Susannah Hickling, an ex-deputy editor of the Digest who is masterminding the Green Challenge. I might also ask my friend Max Carcas who, as it happens, works in the field; he’s involved with a wave power project, so he must be clued up on what’s really green and what isn’t. I’ll let you know what I find out.