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The Green Union Hi Jack

July 2, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

EDF Climate Criminals

Vive la différence

The most amazing thing has happened.

Our Green Union Jack – the one that Ecotricity’s been using for the last three years or so, has been ‘borrowed’ by another energy company.

We’re used to the Big Six energy companies behaving badly, but this is something else.

One of them decided that they liked the idea of a green union jack and the idea of a Green Britain so much – they’ve just gone and adopted it - lock, stock and barrel.

That would be shocking enough but the culprit is none other than EDF. Continue reading “The Green Union Hi Jack”

26 Responses

Good (Energy) Lies – part two

May 21, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/citizen_higgs/The inconvenient facts…

I took some flack last week for my first post on this subject. I expected to of course. It’s not like I wasn’t advised against it. My view is that something wrong has been going on and the whistle needed blowing on it – for the greater good. Better we put our own house in order than have the Daily Mail do it for us.

I know that I wrote a strongly worded piece and if you’ve not been close to this issue over the years the passion/frustration may be hard to understand or easy to misunderstand. I’ll expand on that later - there’s an illuminating back story to tell.

And passions run high on both sides as we’ve seen, but a lot of what’s been posted has not been about the real issue here.

In this second post I want to pull the focus back to the facts.

Inconvenient facts. Continue reading “Good (Energy) Lies – part two”

28 Responses

Good (Energy) Lies

May 12, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25423804@N03/Something very strange/funny/quite awful has come to light in the last few weeks.

It starts with this:
For the last five years Good Energy (a small UK based green electricity supplier) has been claiming to retire 5% more ROCs than they are legally obliged to do. Supposedly to encourage other people to build new green generators.

It’s been their one big claim to green fame. And it’s the single thing that’s brought them recommendations from FOE (Friends Of the Earth), NCC (National Consumer Council) and Ethical Consumer magazine – and it’s brought them customers of course.

Good Energy have repeated this 5% claim in all their marketing material and pushed the recommendation of FOE and NCC consistently now for five years. It’s been a very simple bold claim – ‘we retire 5% more ROCs than our legal obligation’ is a typical format. No wriggle room there. You either do or you don’t.

Nobody ever thought to check if they actually have been doing this though, until two months ago when we first asked OFGEM. I’m not sure why, except we know them pretty well and it seemed more than possible to us that they were saying one thing and doing another. More on this later if anyone’s interested.

OFGEM had some trouble with their systems and their data and it took about two months to get the final, final version of the numbers, although they were pretty close to the first version to be fair.

The most amazing thing is Good Energy, according to OFGEM (the industry regulator and keeper of ROCs no less) have never, ever, in all this time – met a single promise to retire 5% ROCs. Not once in five years.

There was more - For the last two years Good Energy have retired no ROCs at all…!

You have to go back three years to find a year that they actually retired any ROCs in – And then they managed just 40% of their 5% promise.

We were pretty stunned.

We dug deeper.     Continue reading “Good (Energy) Lies”

90 Responses

Woke up Sunday morning… with a price on my head!

April 29, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

Without Money Graf - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/£85 Million to be precise. Went to bed the night before feeling pretty normal and woke up in the Sunday Times Rich List. What’s that all about?

I’m not flagging this here to promote it, or brag about it – it’s just that it’s out there and I think I should say something about it. This kind of thing is easily misunderstood.

The ST have me down as worth £85 Million - this years sixth highest new entrant BTW – bit like top of the pops I thought… :)

We spotted it sat in a coffee shop, my partner Kate, Rui (our bubba) and I.

“You’re worth more than Robbie Williams” was Kate’s (almost) first comment – followed rather (too) swiftly by “let’s go shopping” … :)

There’s two things I wanted to say. Continue reading “Woke up Sunday morning… with a price on my head!”

25 Responses

Top of the League again

March 2, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

Every year we publish what we think is a compelling statistic – the amount of money each electricity company in the UK spends building new sources of green electricity. We express this number as £ per customer because we think that has most relevance for people. In effect it tells you how much from your electricity bill is spent by your power company building new green power sources.

In my opinion it’s a statistic that gets to the heart of the issues, cuts through the greenwash and spin of the Big Six and the small independents – it’s The Measure to me, of whether your deeds match your words.

This weekend we published the fifth annual League Table of UK electricity companies, ranked by this spending measure, and with it a five year average.

The five year average adds a new perspective. We can all have good and bad years and so one year in isolation needs to be viewed with a little caution or wider knowledge.

But five years is five years. Continue reading “Top of the League again”

38 Responses

It wasn’t ET ‘wat done it’

February 10, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

Flying Saucer Eddie - http://flickr.com/photos/luqi/52621354/The slur on the driving/flying skills of all extra terrestrials was lifted today – first findings from the forensic examination of the damaged windmill bits are that it definitely wasn’t a collision of any kind. That lets the MOD off the hook too.

We’ve just had the interim report from ENERCON, the manufacturer of our wind turbines, and they say that they found ‘classic signs of fatigue failure’ in the ring of about 30 bolts, that usually hold the blades on.

Interestingly though they’ve ruled out material or other defect in the bolts themselves, judging that the bolt fatigue is more likely ‘effect’ than ’cause’ of the blade loss.

Continue reading “It wasn’t ET ‘wat done it’”

7 Responses

ROCs, REGOs and wind-powering GB

February 3, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

Guys, just catching up on stuff, looks like a good time to jump in and try provide some answers to the questions on the ‘Why green electricity prices go up when brown prices do part 2‘ post. It was too big for a comment reply really ;)

Where to start… OK - ROCs and REGOs.

Continue reading “ROCs, REGOs and wind-powering GB”

39 Responses

Dam Fuel Poverty - Part Two

January 19, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

Power of the SevernDam Fuel Poverty Petition now live
There have been so many responses on this issue I hope you all won’t mind if I try respond ‘globally’ in one new post.

Much of the debate taking place here seems to be over the potential environmental impact of the proposed Barrage and its technical feasibility. I’m not even close to being expert on either issue.

The possibility of silt killing the Barrage seems to be one of the major feasibility issues, and Neil Law presents a pretty compelling argument on that. I do struggle with the idea that something so simple and so out there (Neil’s research is based on Google and asking people – I hope that’s fair to say) could have been missed in all the studies – but then again why not. I can’t call it. Continue reading “Dam Fuel Poverty - Part Two”

20 Responses

Where’s Mulder and Scully when you need them?

January 14, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

I want to believeCrazy week last week.

It started on Sunday with the kind of phone call I never wanted to have, telling me that one of our turbines had lost a blade. I use the word lost advisedly.

Our people were on site the same day, the manufacturers the next, and we set about looking for the cause. BTW, what we found, just to clear that up… :) , was one blade at the foot of the tower (whole), one badly mangled but still attached and one apparently unharmed and still attached.

Next thing we knew reports of UFOs in the area (at the right time) started to appear in the local press and on the web, and grew in number. Continue reading “Where’s Mulder and Scully when you need them?”

82 Responses

The truth is out there

January 8, 2009 by dale

Filed under: Energy

A space invader

As you may have heard - we have been all over the news today!

The Sun got there first with a front page this morning.

Dale really wants to blog about this - but as you can imagine he has been inundated with media calls. He is drafting a post and as soon as he has finished it will go up here.

If you want to ask any questions or want to speculate or provide any information in the meantime - please feel free to post your comments here.

Be sure to check the ‘UFO’ damage mystery round-up over on the main Ecotricity site.

UPDATE: Dale has now written a post about this - “Where’s Mulder and Scully when you need them?”

Paul

61 Responses

Zero Carbonista

Dale Vince 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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