Who’s Investing in Green Electricity? March 1, 2009
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Environment , trackbackAn article in the Observer this morning caught my eye, saying that Britain’s six largest electricity companies are not spending enough on renewable energy. The figures cited suggested that they were spending on average £30 per customer per year over the last five years, not enough to meet the Renewables Obligation which obliges electricty companies to source a certain, and rising, percentage of their supply from renewable sources. It also said that Green Energy UK, and Good Energy, two companies which supply ‘Green’ electricity had invested absolutely nothing. Something seems odd.
The article was based on a press release from Ecotricity, another green electricity supplier, and a quick check back to their website gives a few more details, and does indeed show their claim that the two green suppliers investing nothing.
So what’s the story with Good Energy and Green Energy UK?
With Green Energy UK, I think the answer is quite simple – they work by making supply contracts with other companies, and so support the development of renewables that way. Green Energy UK has a vast array of suppliers, generating by every way you could think of – biofuel from recycled vegetable oil, solar, hydro. They provide a way for small, local generators to sell their excess capacity. It’s not fair to say they invested nothing, and that statement looks like a pure marketing ploy by Ecotricity against the two companies which compete directly with them.
Good Energy seems to be in a slightly different situation. Most of their capacity is supplied by their 4MW windfarm in Delabole, in Cornwall. This farm was established in 1991, and there doesn’t seem to have been any major investment in it over the last few years. The company has just gained planning permission to decommission the current turbines, and replace them with new ones, tripling the generation capacity. They may not have been investing much lately, but that’s about to change. They are also a very small company.
Ecotricity, of course, does invest heavily in renewables. All their profits go to increasing capacity on their windfarms so, although their supply is not 100% renewable, they are making the biggest contribution they can to increasing the renewable capacity. That’s why I use them (and they’ve got nice call centre staff).
The article is basically a marketing press release with a fair amount of mudslinging at the competition, but it does raise an important issue. Overall, the amount of investment in renewable energy by the major suppliers is truly pathetic. The UK should be a leader in wind power generation, instead it has only the fifth highest capacity in Europe.
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