Nobody could have missed the recent and ongoing food scandal of horsemeat being found in all sorts of places where it’s not meant to be.
As a vegan, the story is a little bemusing.
And I don’t mean to sound smug, but I have the comfort of being distant from the action, there’s no possibility of horsemeat turning up in my lentil burgers… presumably… 
More importantly I thought the story exposed a level of hypocrisy and perhaps denial amongst meat eating people, in this country.
Here’s a question…
What industry sector enjoys an average pre tax profit margin of over 30%
Pays tax at an average rate of less than 20%
Operates a Monopoly
It’s the Energy sector, funnily enough… But it’s not the usual suspects.
Here’s a guest post for you from Ecotricity staffer Dave. He was recently asked to put the Nemesis to the test as a commuter vehicle! Here’s his thoughts:
A few weeks ago I was asked if I would mind driving the Nemisis for a few weeks. We apparently needed to get a few miles on it and test it in ‘normal’ daily use – whatever that means?
I work in the Ecotricity offices in Stroud and live in Worcestershire, a daily commute of about 51 miles in each direction, assuming that I take no detours on the way home. My normal mode of transport is either a diesel VW or a motorcycle that each do around 50mpg for the journey (over £12 per day in fuel).
Well, the chance to drive a car like the Nemisis was too good an opportunity to miss so of course I welcomed it with open arms, I mean the chance to drive a super car that would do 0-100mph in 8 seconds doesn’t present itself every day! Continue reading “Guest Post: Dave and the Nemesis”
I’ve been without a car for the last two years or so – I don’t count the Nemesis since I rarely seem to drive it lately, it’s always out at a show or away being tweaked – my daily transport has been my Motorbike. Until about three weeks ago, when I got myself a Nissan Leaf.
Nissan had lent me one for a while and I was impressed, so impressed I wanted to get one. Partly to use myself, for trips my motorbike isn’t so suited to, partly also to get a better idea of how life with a mainstream all-electric car can be, and I wanted to see how realistic it might be to replace ecotricity pool cars with electric cars, anytime soon.
Several weeks later and I have to say I love it. It’s a really cool car to drive, and I simply love driving without burning anything.
My son Rui (4 now) loves it too. He plugs it in for me, works the Sat Nav and all that stuff – you know like four year olds do these days…
In stark contrast, Kate, my other half – hates it (or she did). I was just saying one day what a great car it was and she just went all Clarkson on me – “as long as you don’t want to go anywhere” she said in a rather strident and mocking tone, strikingly reminiscent of the old fossil himself. Ouch.
Then along comes the ‘Fuel Crisis’…. and next thing I know, Kate is boasting on Facebook, about not needing to get in garage queues, oh yes – she went from Clarkson to Swampy in a heartbeat. That made me smile… 
Continue reading “Fuel Crisis, What Fuel Crisis?”
I’m not given to paranoia – I should say that first.
But in the past few months there have been a succession of ‘think tank’ reports, press articles and TV programs – all with the same theme – wind energy costs too much and it doesn’t work very well.
The picture being painted – is that green energy policies are responsible for huge hikes in energy bills, now and in the future – and that onshore wind in particular is a big cost and big waste of money. It’s a tune that much of our media are happy to dance to.
The timing of all of this is probably not coincidental as the government prepares to make the most radical changes to the electricity market in perhaps a generation (no pun intended). There’s a lot at stake.
What we have here, IMO, is special interest group lobbying – using dodgy (often very shoddy) think tank reports as the basis for press coverage – which itself masquerades as fact to the unwary. It’s a dirty tricks campaign.
Meanwhile – OFGEM have just published their latest report into the cost of the Renewables Obligation (for 2010 – 2011) – the main policy to stimulate and support green energy in the UK.
It’s a startling reality check for anyone sucked in by this campaign.
The actual cost per household that year, for green energy support was just £15.15. And that was for all technologies.
The part of that which went to onshore wind energy – was just £4.68.
Yes, less than a fiver. Continue reading “What the Papers Won’t Say”
For most of last year, and continuing quite unabated into this New Year, the mood in our country has turned very much against the Big Six energy companies. And it’s not hard to see why. People are fed up with the unethical pricing, complex tariffs, awful customer service and the dire lack of investment in new sources of green energy. It’s become quite unbearable, self evidently. Even the government are calling on people to leave the Big Six.
We’ve just launched a campaign on that front. It’s called ‘Dump The Big Six’.
And, as befits an organisation such as ecotricity, it’s not a big budget TV campaign – it’s taking place online, through digitally enabled People:Power – social media.
The campaign’s crumbling cooling towers are symbols of a passing era, of an old industrial approach to energy production – through burning fossil fuels. The overwhelming feeling this animation gives me is that it’s ‘time to move on’ – as a country we need to, and as people we need to. We’re calling on Britons to ‘Dump The Big Six’ and the old way of doing things (they’re inseparable after all) and to instead be a part of a revolution – one where People Power brings about something so axiomatically right for Britain – (Green) energy independence.
It’s our first campaign on this scale and it marks a watershed. We’ve spent the last few years putting in place the processes and infrastructure to enable us to dramatically scale up our work. Our very deliberate plan was to be very good at what we did before we tried to get big. And we feel we’ve achieved that now.
We feel it’s time now to take on the Big Six. We’re ready and perhaps, now more than ever before, Britain is too.
And what are we offering that the Big Six don’t?
Well, in a way we are the anti Big Six – the polar opposite or perhaps photographic negative. Firstly we have an ethical pricing policy – wherein we have only two simple tariffs, everyone gets our latest best price, automatically – and we match the standard price of each Big Six on their home turf. Secondly we have the greenest possible outcome from our customers’ energy bills, ten times more of the billed £ gets spent building new sources of Green Energy. And thirdly and no means least – we have real customer service, we care passionately about this, answer the phone ourselves, keep our promises – all basic stuff, but so long missing from the Big Six.
We are what they are not – perhaps, even, we are, or will prove to be, their nemesis.
Dump The Big Six is about People:Power.
People:Power is at the heart of ecotricity, it’s how we work – empowering people to bring about change with their energy bills.
And the campaign itself is taking place in the (relatively) new world of social media, a place that enables and empowers people to come together, voice opinions and bring about change (38 Degrees is a great example of that) – in a way that has never been possible before. It’s digitally enabled democracy.
People:Power can bring change to the energy sector – when people join us they vote with their energy bills – and the more that do so the better. Together we can harness the energy bills of Britain and direct them to a proper outcome – the creation of a Green, energy independent Britain – a Green Britain.
I hope you like the animation, it’s still making me smile and I’ve seen it a lot. We’ve got a fun Facebook App to go with it, where you can dump your Big Six, to a power ballad accompaniment.
Please feel free to share with everyone you know….
Cheers.
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Find out more:
http://www.facebook.com/ecotricity
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/dump-big-six
One Saturday, mid-November 1896, a small group of pioneering motorists set off in some of the first horseless carriages – their plan was to drive from the Metropole Hotel London to the Metropole Hotel Brighton. We know this now as the London to Brighton run.
Their aim was to demonstrate and promote the recently invented motor car. In addition, they celebrated the new Road Act, which that year raised the speed limit from 4mph to 14mph and removed the need for a man to walk in front of each motor vehicle waving a red flag. Quite a breakthrough for drivers of the day.
The cars taking part that day included those powered by electricity, steam and the internal combustion engine (petrol): back then it was a three horse race, technology wise. The internal combustion engine eventually won out of course. Fast forward to today and we take for granted the quite incredible travelling capability of modern cars. We Britons collectively drive 250 billion miles a year in our 30 million cars – all but 2,000 of which have internal combustion engines. Continue reading “2012 — the Year of the Electric Car..?”
Hiya – Paul here. I’ve got something a little different for you… it’s a guest post from an Ecotricity staff member and is definitely one for our ‘Food‘ section. We think it’s a very moving and inspiring post – we hope you do to. Without further ado – I’ll hand you over to James… Continue reading “Guest post: Half the man I used to be. Well, almost”
About this time last year, we launched our first ecobond – a fairly radical idea at the time.
We had three principle aims:
And when we launched it this time last year we were both excited and a little anxious, as to how it might be received. Continue reading “ecobonds are back”
These seem to be the big three.
Customer Service is perhaps the most overlooked of them all – it’s the one where customers have least data to compare – to actually identify a better service.
Switching for this reason will often be a reaction to bad service with their current provider and at the same time a leap in the dark – often out of the frying pan and into the fire.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Since October 2009 OFGEM has obliged all energy companies to record and report their annual customer complaints in a standardised way – making them easily comparable (potentially).
But most people won’t know this and won’t have seen any figures – because they get buried on individual supplier websites. They take some digging out, truth be told. Continue reading “Why do people switch energy supplier?”
This blog is about answers to the big questions - how will we keep the lights on, what kind of cars will we drive (will we drive?) and how will we feed ourselves - in a post oil world, and a world where we can't afford to keep burning things and throwing things away. Energy, Transport and Food are the three big issues.
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