Our first ‘Green Gas’ customers are with us now. Me included I’m pleased to say.

While we shake things down we’re limiting the sign up rate to a few hundred a week. If you want to get in the queue to be among the first you can do that here.

The response from Ecotricity customers and non customers, to this idea, has been fantastic.

The response from British Gas has been something else. Odd to say the least.

Just before Xmas we had a series of legal threats from them, about one a week for three weeks in fact.

The first alleged that we were ‘pretending’ to be British Gas. They didn’t like our tongue in cheek “Real British Gas” logo it seems – we’ve tweaked it a bit here to make them feel better. It’s hard to take that seriously – we are so not pretending to be British Gas. Why on earth would we? It was a joke guys.

About a week later we got another legal threat, this time dear old BG claimed we were misleading people by offering Green Gas, when in fact it wasn’t (green). Something we think we’ve been pretty clear about.

As part of this they complained our web site offered ‘free gas’. Well I don’t know what gas they might have been breathing down there in BG’s legal bunker, but there’s no such thing on our web site. Anyway, they threatened to refer us to Trading Standards, that would have been funny – we ignored them, nothing happened.

Then, talk about buses, about a week later we get another legal threat from BG. This time they’re upset because we’re about to publish 2009’s WhichGreen statistics – the ones that show how much each electricity company in the UK spent, in 2009 – building new renewables.

BG didn’t like the number we had for them, which is zero (funnily enough they have a green tariff called Zero – is this what it means… ).

I won’t get into the details of that here as we’ll publish WhichGreen 2009 figures shortly.

So, it seems we’ve miffed BG by announcing our Green Gas plans, they’ve made that pretty clear to us. This string of legal threats doesn’t do them any credit IMO, but maybe that’s just how the Big Six roll.

Meanwhile on the real Green Gas front, we’re moving ahead with plans to build a pilot project. It’s actually fascinating stuff (or maybe I’m sad… ) – looking at volumes of waste required, where to get it, the technology, land requirement, planning issues and the number of homes we might be able to supply Green Gas to, from each ‘GasMill’.

More on this later.

Cheers.

To most people that may have been interesting but not such a big deal. To anybody close to this issue it’s something altogether different.

The article runs under the headline:

Energy firm EDF abandons 2012 Olympics turbine due to ‘lack of wind’

The article doesn’t quote EDF directly but it confidently says:

“French-owned EDF Energy are not bidding to run the 393ft-tall turbine on the Games site as they were concerned about a lack of wind.

The company, London’s largest electricity supplier, said it would not be able to sell enough wind energy from the 2012 Olympic site into the national grid in future years to justify the turbine’s £2 million start-up costs.

This is an Olympic sized ‘Pork Pie’.

EDF actually failed to win the tender to build a Wind Turbine to power the Olympic games (London 2012) – about one whole year ago…!

Why on earth would they claim now that they’ve decided to walk away – from a project that had walked away from them a whole year ago?

Best guess is that EDF got wind (no pun intended, honestly) that an announcement on this project is imminent, and it looked a bit embarrassing for them. London’s largest energy supplier, big games sponsor, (and as we know a very green company… ) can’t win a single turbine contract to power the Games, on their home turf… Yep I can see how that might look.

To me, this story (in the ES) is damage limitation, a cynical attempt to get ‘a version’ out first – only trouble is this ‘version’ is fake, it’s a lie.

Did EDF plant this story or did the Evening Standard forget ‘journalistic standards’ (like having a credible source…) in their rush for a story. I know where my money goes…

It’s a bit worrying though when the company that owns the UK’s nuclear industry appears to play so fast and loose with the truth. It’s not like the nuclear industry has a big reputation for honesty (on safety issues) already.

Olympic Pork Pies are one thing, but……

Cheers.

Just a quick heads-up – Dale is just about to take part in this week’s Guardian Environment ‘You ask, they answer’ Q&A session – could be interesting… If any of you fancy chipping in your 2 penneth, dive on in – the water’s lovely!

EDITED TO ADD: The Q&A session is now closed now but it’s still worth reading.

I couldn’t say much last week except we had something I thought was pretty exciting to unveil in a few days time.  Well here it is now.

Today we’re launching Green Gas.

What’s it all about?

For a number of years we’ve been meaning to offer gas to our customers, partly because so many people use it (it’s a matter of pragmatism) and partly because we thought our customers would rather pay their gas bills to Ecotricity – and see us use that revenue to bring about some environmental gain – than pay the Big Six.

We also thought that it would give us an opportunity to engage our customers in a debate about gas and our need to wean ourselves off it – since it’s running out soon enough.

We thought we’d use the revenue to plant trees or plant more windmills, for a green outcome – the one thing we definitely were not going to do though was to ‘carbon offset’.

Up until recently we’d had bigger issues to wrestle with on the electricity front – basically getting the systems in place to ensure good accurate billing on time and so on – getting it right in electricity, before seriously looking to add gas.

We’ve been running those new systems now for over a year and we’ve achieved an enormous transformation in all areas.

And so we thought it time to look into gas once more.  And we found something very exciting had become possible – the production of gas from renewable sources and its injection into the gas grid.  Nobody is doing it in the UK yet, but it has started in other parts of the world – to be clear I mean the grid injection part – making biogas is not so new of course.

It’s now possible to offer actual Green Gas – renewable gas.  Not just gas with some kind of bolt on outcome.

And it fits perfectly with our green electricity model – we can take gas bills and turn them into Gasmills.  As we do electricity bills into Windmills.

And that’s our plan, to start supplying gas to our customers and to invest the revenue from those bills into the building of Gasmills – changing our fuel mix over time (from Brown to Green) as we do with electricity.

We’ll publish an annual Fuel Mix Disclosure for our gas (known in the industry as FMD), there’s no legislation for that, it just makes sense.

This is the UK’s first Green Gas initiative (it won’t be the last though – we’re sure of that)

And truly Eco Dual Fuel has arrived.

There’s an exciting big picture to all of this.

The UK has the potential to make 50% of it’s own gas needs from this process – Anaerobic Digestion (AD).   We could aim to provide the other 50% through demand reduction, energy efficiency measures and the use of renewable heat sources like solar thermal.  And that gives us the opportunity for, and the vision of, a Britain that’s Gas Independent in the future.

The North Sea supplies run out in about 20 years, we already import 50% or so of our gas from some pretty unstable parts of the world – the answer is to make our own.

We’re going to throw our weight into this.

Some stats if you’re interested.

Making 50% of the UK’s gas from AD would take about 1200 large Gasmills and an investment of about £35 Billion.

For Ecotricity to achieve a 50% FMD in self made green gas, as we have in green electricity – would take an investment of about £50 Million.

And spookily enough that’s what we’ve spent so far, getting to (almost) 50% self built green electricity – about £50 Million.

I’m truly, massively excited about the prospects for this, it’s a real viable solution to a problem that otherwise just didn’t seem to have one.

Ecotricity is in the process of evolving into a green energy company (from a green electricity company) – with gas and electricity both going from brown to green.

It feels like we’ve been a one legged football player, up until now.  We had half the moves.  Now we have the whole.

Oh, nearly forgot to mention, we’re going to price match dear old British Gas and match their dual fuel discount.  Continuing our philosophy of ‘green for the price of brown’.

If you’re interested in having Green Gas – you can register for more information over on the Ecotricity site. There’s also a press release here and an Observer article here.

Cheers.

The ASA said:

” ..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer from the ads that EDF was a ‘green’ company, we concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”

“..we considered that consumers were unlikely to infer that EDF Energy was a British company. We therefore concluded that the ads were unlikely to mislead.”

EDF had this to say:

“EDF Energy welcomes the decision by the Advertising Standards Authority regarding our Green Britain Day and Team Green Britain advertising, in which neither challenge has been upheld by the authority… We are committed to leading the energy change to bring about a low carbon future and we have led the way among energy companies in making long-term commitments to the environment and to sustainability… EDF Energy is the UK’s largest generator of low carbon electricity.”

Dale had this to say in response:

“To most people a green union jack represents something or someone Green and British. And to most people EDF are neither, being Nuclear and French. And however many sugar coated low carbon blandishments EDF comes out with the truth is in the numbers – they are the world’s biggest nuclear waste polluter, one of it’s biggest fossil fuel polluters and their contribution to new renewable capacity and to green issues in the UK is truly pitiful.

The ASA offer no evidence to back their judgement, which is actually just an opinion dressed up – and one that ignores the hundreds of people who wrote to it to complain the ad was misleading. It makes the ASA look rather ridiculous, but then again they are an advertising industry funded body, not an independent watchdog – should we expect any better?

The funny part is that the ASA have in effect said, in their opinion – ‘nobody in their right mind would believe that EDF are green or British’

OK I paraphrase just a little, or maybe I’m inferring?…

Either way if the ASA are right it’s actually a bitter sweet day for EDF – who’ve poured tens of millions into this – dodging the ASA bullet but at what cost to their ‘green credentials’ ?

How many windmills could they have built instead…

Cheers.”

There’s lots of campaigns focussed on it right now, lots of people trying to show politicians that this is what we all want. And I hope they succeed, I think they probably already have actually. Copenhagen is all over the news and it’s clear that there’s real public pressure for a deal. That’s about the best a campaign can hope for. Now it’s up to the delegates. At least this time the US isn’t being led by an oil man/half wit.

I went to the UN conference in Kyoto, the one that put climate change on the map. A friend of mine got hold of some passes and we just turned up with no idea what to expect. Our plan was to talk anyone that would listen about the role that wind energy has to play in fighting climate change. The message went down well.

Back then hardly anyone had heard of the concept of Climate Change and even fewer people held it to be true. It was more the territory of scientists and ‘hippies’.

Actually, even back then, almost 2,000 of the world’s top scientists (the IPCC) had told the world’s political leaders ‘There is only one responsible choice – to act now.’

And Kyoto was a success. Not because the targets agreed were particularly ambitious but because targets were set at all. It was and still is an important moment in human history. The world had set its first carbon targets.

Much has changed since then. Most people today have heard of climate change and more importantly accept that we urgently need to do something about it. It’s as rarely out of the news these days as it used to be rarely in the news a decade ago.

The Kyoto accord played a vital part in this transformation, many people are hoping that a successor to Kyoto will emerge from Copenhagen. I hope so too.

But Kyoto targets have not been met. So what use are another set of targets? We actually need deeds now not words. Targets are only a small part of the story, the easy part – hitting them will take real commitment.

I’ve decided not to go to Copenhagen, partly because I don’t think I can make much of a difference and can use the time better back here. But also partly because a couple of weeks ago I met somebody here in Stroud that was trying to get there and who, I think, has an important role to play. I’ve decided to help this person get there.

I’d like to introduce her here – her name is Isabelle and she’s been chosen from thousands of applicants to be a part of the UK youth delegation at the talks – the delegation will take part and have the chance to speak. And their voice should be heard. Too often we see people with 10 or 20 years left to live opposing windmills and other initiatives that are essential to the hopes of young people today – to have any kind of decent life. Young people have more skin in this game than the people in power today and those that wield influence at planning – they’ll pick up the tab for our failure. That’s why I think their voice is important.

You’ll be able to follow Isabelle’s progress at the talks here, she’s going to try and find the time to blog for us, it should be a fascinating insight.

With no more ado, here’s Isabelle’s first guest post –

Cheers.

The road to Copenhagen

After nearly 20 years of endless conferences, discussions, and empty promises to cut emissions we have finally run out of time. This December when the world meets in Copenhagen it will be our last chance to agree an effective global deal. It has to be now because we won’t get another shot.

Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft

My name is Isabelle Ellis-Cockcroft and I’m from Stroud. I am one of 23 young people travelling to the Copenhagen Climate Conference 2009 this December as part of the UK Youth Delegation, on behalf of the UK Youth Climate Coalition.

Being on the delegation is a big commitment. So why am I prepared to put so much of my time and energy into this? Because climate change isn’t about polar bears, it’s about everyone I know and care for; my friends, my family and our future. As a young person I cannot escape climate change. I can choose to bury my head in the sand and ignore the terrifying world I will have to face later. Or I can stand up and be counted. I can start now, while we still have time, and help to build the better future that I want to see.

In September the UK Youth Delegation met with some of the UK’s core team of UN negotiators at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). They spoke about how mass public pressure on climate change is the only thing that will give them the mandate to push for a strong enough deal at Copenhagen.

The UK has done some good talking on climate change; on paper it has one of the strongest climate change policies on the world. But the action the UK has actually taken so far amounts to rearranging deckchairs on Titanic.

There’s a great deal of passion out there but the most vocal seem to be those who oppose the change we so desperately need – the anti-wind lobby is a perfect example. People need to look at a bigger picture than the view they see from their kitchen window. I am 18 and in 2050 I will be 59. I want the chance to live my life in a world with a safe and stable climate, where there is enough food and water to go around. Is that too much to ask?

Paul here (back off my hols).

A couple of event announcements for our UK based readers. Firstly – I thought you might like to know about a public appearance of the Nemesis Wind Powered Car happening on the 12th/13th September at the Science Museum in Wroughton, Near Swindon in Wiltshire. It will be part of the family oriented Festival of Innovation. I am hoping to be there with my family on the 12th – so might see you there? It is a free event (although high carbon producing transport will be charged £5 to park).

Here’s the event page for the Festival of Innovation on Facebook.

Also – Ecotricity are hosting a kite festival to celebrate the power of the wind on the 13th September 2009.

Help us to fill the sky with kites and celebrate the power of the wind at Thistledown Environment Centre, near Nailsworth (Stroud).

• Free Admission
• 500 kites to give away (or fly your own)
• Explore 70 acres of natural environment and wildlife
• Free soft drinks courtesy of bottlegreen
• Professional kite demonstration

I also created a Facebook event page for the 500Kites event too.

Take it easy, and we hope to see you at one or both

Paul

…to celebrate that relatively modern phenomenon of companies trying to sell themselves as being rather greener and more ethical than they really are. Today would be an apt day, it is after all – Green Britain Day. Where’s the Greenwash in that? Oh where to start.

Green Britain day comes to us courtesy of EDF. That’s Electricite de France to give them their full name. EDF is a French, state owned nuclear power company. They are also the world’s biggest corporate producer of nuclear waste, and one of it’s biggest traders and burners of coal – with a tiny tiny fleet of windmills (0.7% of their generation). And to promote this campaign they’ve ‘borrowed’ (as Fred Pearce gently puts it in this week’s Guardian) someone else’s logo – the green union jack. This flag symbolises two things, Green and British. EDF are of course neither.

This really does take Greenwash to a whole new level. It could almost be the plot of a slapstick comedy or a farce. If it wasn’t for the fact that they are seriously intent on convincing us Brits that they (EDF) and nuclear energy are green and good for Britain.

Stealing someone else’s clothes is not a new tactic in the world of big dirty business. And nor is Greenwash.

A few years ago the UK witnessed Fairwash, where years of truly pioneering work on the concept of Fairtrade were swamped by a tidal wave of big budget corporate look alike schemes. Everybody and their brother now has a version of Fairtrade. It might be tempting to say where’s the harm in that, the more people doing it the better. Well yes, if they truly are doing it, I would agree. But that’s not how this usually goes down. When big brands move into the ethical arena it’s for the kudos, to look like a better company, to follow a new trend and gain sales – it isn’t for the cause, it’s for their cause, which is of course to make money and to add ‘shareholder value’.

Pale corporate imitations of green and ethical brands or products are truly harmful. They distract consumers and divert spending from the real thing and they bring the risk of early onset ‘issue fatigue’. You know how it goes – Yawn, yawn here’s another company that says it pays its suppliers a decent price because it really cares about them or says it’s really committed to fighting climate change or whatever…

Maybe we need a regulator for ethical claims. We’ve got OFGEM for electricity and OFWAT for water – I propose we should name this one ETHOFF.

Let’s come back to Green Britain day. The campaign itself has laudable aims, fighting climate change and making Britain a greener place, I mean who could argue with that. Not me, that’s what I spend my life in pursuit of. But look for any substance and you won’t find it. It’s all recycled and gimmicky.

And it’s a distraction. Green Britain is a serious goal, it requires a vision underpinned by real policies, a suite of joined up actions that we can all get behind – with meaningful outcomes. It’s a mission not a PR opportunity.

EDF put more money into the Games and this Greenwash day than they spent in the last five years building new sources of renewable energy. That’s the hard numerical reality behind the bunting and the media froth. EDF – all mouth and no green trousers.

That’s why today really should become National Greenwash day.

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.

And that’s all the more shocking because of what the letters EDF stand for – Électricité de France, which seems just a little at odds with the adoption of the green flag… And of course the fact that they are a Nuclear power company (not everybody’s idea of Green).

A French, state owned, Nuclear power company – using ‘our flag’ (or one very close to it) to green itself up – you couldn’t make this stuff up. And they’ve submitted a Trademark application… they want to own the Green Union Jack!

This is not just a smash and grab raid on our identity (perhaps our national identity) – it’s an attempt at possibly the biggest greenwash in corporate history.

I mean these guys are not British and they are so not Green. The two things that this flag surely suggests to people.

I first saw a poster with the green union jack on it in Bristol last week. Someone had spray painted the message “EDF Climate Criminals” on it, which I thought was apt.

I went back the next day to photograph it for this post but it had been removed – we’ve recreated it in the image above anyway. Just for fun.

Now I hear that they’ve painted their service vans. And they look rather like Ecotricity’s – check these pictures and play spot the difference.

Here’s some facts about EDF:

• 85% owned by the French State.
• The worlds third largest producer of toxic Nuclear waste – but the two producers ahead of them are actually whole countries, rather big ones too – The US and Canada. So EDF are the world’s biggest corporate nuclear polluter.
• They have some 5 million domestic customers in the UK.
• And they produce about 30 million Tonnes of CO2 per year (in the UK). No small amount.
• Recently they bought British Energy – might explain why they suddenly feel so British.
• They sit at the bottom of the green spending league (of the Big Six anyway, Good Energy pip them to the very bottom…:) ) spending the least per Capita (per customer) building new renewables. A measly £10 last year. Check that table here.
• And EDF have never met their minimum legal obligation under the RO – how green is that?
• And then there’s Coal. Fred Pearce in today’s Guardian has some useful info on that front, including the fact that – EDF Trading boasts of being “one of the largest participants in the global coal market” and it imports 30M tonnes a year in to the EU, for burning in it’s own and other peoples coal fired power stations (the ultimate CO2 producers of course).

So there you have it – the French Nuclear giant, the world’s largest corporate nuke polluter, big coal trader and burner, grabbing the green jack in what looks like an attempt to have us all believe they are Green and they are British.

Quite breathtaking really. If this isn’t the greatest attempted greenwash in corporate history I’ll be even more speechless.

Anyway, we’re mobilising to do something about it.

There’s a ‘grass roots’ campaign already kicked off on the net, you can join in on Facebook here.

Legal proceedings are almost certain to follow, unless they back down in the next few days.

Nuclear is Green apparently. French is British and what’s someone else’s can easily be EDFs – that’s the Alice in Wonderland world they appear to live in.

Vive la différence.

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.

For over five years Good Energy have been making a very simple, very plain English, public promise to retire a certain amount of ROCs. That’s a fact. (A list of public claims on retirement is here – they all say the same thing.)

The data from OFGEM shows beyond argument that Good Energy’s ROC retirement claims have never been met – they have never been the truth. This is also a fact.

We raised this with Good Energy two months ago, they offered all sorts of responses before finally coming up with what I’m going to dub – ‘ROC claim number two’. This was first made known to Business Green here.

‘ROC claim number two’ goes like this – Good Energy don’t retire the 5% of ROCs which they claim to (in ROC claim number one), they have a different policy which sees them retire an ‘equivalent amount’ – by which they mean something quite complex, though it boils down to less actual ROCs than claimed.

This policy has never been set out in any Good Energy documentation we can find, it’s never been made public before now – you have to wonder why. There’s a public policy on the one hand and a secret, substantially smaller, one on the other hand. Not very good practice at best. Looks like deliberate deceit to me – but that’s opinion, based on my reading of the facts.

According to Juliet Davenport (CEO) Good Energy have just been misunderstood.

Well, not by people whose first language is English I feel. A claim to retire 5% is a very simple thing to understand – impossible to misunderstand. If there’s a gulf between that claim and the actuality then the reason is the claim itself is false – it does not accurately portray the reality.

But what is this hitherto secret ‘ROC claim number two’ all about?

It’s not simple, but in effect it means that if they claim to retire 5% ROCs they will actually retire nearer 3%. Because in their own estimation it’s not the ROCs that count – it’s the value retired, so 3% ROCs retired at full value equals 5% at partial value. Make sense? I don’t think so.

OFGEM have confirmed that there is no such concept in the Renewables Obligation. It’s a Good Energy construct. Fact.

You have to ask why not just say ‘we retire 3% ROCs’ why try to big this up as 5% (while meaning ‘financially equivalent to 5% at buyout value only’ without saying so).

That’s not a very transparent way to operate. I think this is also a fact.

But the big question is this – Is ROC claim number two ‘real’?

Did Good Energy retire ROCs all this time on that other ‘unspoken’ basis?

We crunched the new numbers… Drum roll time again… No they did not!

This is also a fact.

Here’s the table showing the number of ROCs that would need to be retired to meet this ‘new policy’ set against the number actually retired with the % of the new ROC promise actually met – or not – in the final column.

Clearly this new policy has not been adhered to.

One untruth appears to be following another.

ROC claim number one, the public one, is clearly not the truth.
ROC claim number two, the fall back private one, is also clearly not the truth.
Is there a ROC claim number three?

Over to you Good Energy, ready to come clean yet?

Cheers.

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.    

The total value of the broken ROC promises, these last five years, is bigger than Good Energy’s total reported profits for the same period – had they been keeping their word, they would have been trading at a loss. Perhaps trading insolvently.

One of the biggest ironies here is that both FOE and NCC sought to offer consumers confidence, in a confusing market (they said), through their research they offered a strong endorsement of Good Energy as the greenest supplier and an ethical company.

But neither organisation undertook any actual checks, they just accepted what they were told. That’s a pretty awful thing for champions of the truth to do, IMO.

Maybe it was a subliminal thing, a company with Good in the title must be good right? Wrong it would seem, Good Energy have been dishonest to them both, not just once, but over a number of years – claiming to retire 5% while they knowingly did not.

There can be no doubt here – the claim was to retire 5% additional ROCs and the facts are that this has never even once been met.

And it’s three years since Good Energy retired any ROCs at all.

This is serial deceit, perhaps fraud is a fair description – deceit for monetary gain. Perpetrated on FOE, NCC, on customers and on shareholders – people who bought shares during this time based on profits that have been inflated by the broken ROC promises.

Customers have been paying a £100 a year or so premium to be with Good Energy, something NCC said was ‘fully justified by the ROC retirement’ – without ever checking of course. Consumers can sleep safe in their beds with champions like this on their side…

And check this, welcoming proposals from OFGEM for new green tariff guidelines, Juliet Davenport, CEO of GE wrote this in the Guardian in Feb this year:

“We must tackle these false claims for domestic green power tariffs. It’s time to overhaul the system that allows electricity firms to hoodwink customers trying to go green”

“… having called for clear rules, regulation and transparency over green tariffs for several years, I thought I would offer some clarity.”

“While they may not be perfect, we feel the guidelines could shine a welcome light into some murky waters.”

The most breathtaking and bare faced hypocrisy you’ve ever heard? It is for me.

We might expect such behaviour from one of the Big Six, or big oil company and we might expect FOE to be jumping all over them for it – where are you now guys?

Worse part for me is this:
Good Energy’s purpose in the last five years has been to try and force on the UK market this philosophy of ROC retirement – something that we have been arguing all this time is ineffective (it does not lead to new capacity) and too costly to be affordable. Ripping up ROC certificates is a waste of customer money, money better spent building something, that’s been our stance and for that we’ve been slated by FOE and NCC.

So yes, it’s rather a schadenfreude moment for us.

Good Energy have been putting profits before promises, deceiving the consumer groups that have been recommending them – trying to foist their, now clearly bankrupt, philosophy of ROC retirement on the rest of us, while not doing it themselves.

I am flabbergasted actually, it’s the most amazing con.

Since we first raised the issue with Good Energy they’ve offered a series of responses – first came mild offence that we should even question this, second was reassurance that the 5% retirement actually did take place, third came ‘we retire 18 months late’ – easily disproven and then dropped to be replaced by ‘we’re too busy actually, with an advert in Bath Life, to deal with this’ I kid you not.

We also flagged it to FOE and NCC – they’ve both been slow to react, simply asking Good Energy if they really have retired the 5% ROCs and, it seems, happy to accept the assurances that they have. OFGEM meanwhile maintains that they most definitely have not.

It’s time for Good Energy to just come clean. The promise was simple, the failure is as equally simple as it is total. No more lies pls guys.

Cheers.

ETA: Here’s a table with the figures for a more complete picture:

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.

First – I’ve not suddenly got an awful lot of money, this £85 Million is what the ST team reckons Ecotricity is worth, and since I own that they say it’s what I’m worth. I guess that’s fair enough, but it is a paper thing. I suspect it is for most of the list. I did tell them BTW a few months ago (when they asked) that the value of Ecotricity was academic, because it’s not and won’t be for sale.

The second thing is I know this could just look plain wrong to some people – like the wind NYMBYs for example who for many years now have been saying this is all about the money not the environment etc etc. I can live with that, been living with their stupidity for a while now…  I do care what some people think though. Thing I wanted to say was that, although it makes me a little uncomfortable, on the whole I think it’s a good thing this Rich Listing– here’s why.

To 99% of people on the street (my guess – not a researched stat..) money is the one simple and single measure of success and that holds especially true for the media. If you’re rich, you’re successful, so you must know something worth knowing or do something worth doing and you must be worth talking about or to. It gives you a voice, even if you’re stupid, unfortunately…

It’s an endorsement IMO of green electricity, of Ecotricity, of environmental and social business concepts and so on – this whole alternative way of doing things that gets talked about here and elsewhere, will look a lot more credible to a lot of people now. How much that will matter or help I can’t guess, but I know that this puts green and ethical stuff up the radar, the stuff we’re talking about and doing, works well. Well enough anyway for the fans of money to spot it.

Anyway that’s it, I’m still me – take a pinch of salt with this Rich list thing – and please no begging e-mails, I’m actually a bit skint right now…

Cheers.

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.

It makes interesting reading. The Big Six are averaging less than £30 per customer per year on new green build – the relevance of that is that the Renewables Obligation places an obligation on all power companies to increase by roughly 1% per year their proportion of green electricity – and that 1% should cost roughly £30 per customer.

So these guys that spend tens of millions on their TV adverts and the like to convince us all that they are really green, and who offer 100% green tariffs (often at a premium) to a few customers – are actually falling to meet their tiny legal minimum targets. That’s the big thing I see from the stats.

And the small indie sector is actually worse – Green Energy and Good Energy may call themselves Green and Good, but they spend nothing at all, make no contribution to new green sources of power.

The Observer picked the story up this weekend.

And Centrica ‘hit back’ apparently. Their defence..? That Ecotricity wasn’t taking into account their promises of what they might do in the future. Damn right we’re not.

Promises are adding hot air to the environment not taking it away…

The Big Six seek to deceive us all with their marketing. The number of windmills they have in their adverts are inversely proportional to the number they have in the real world. And the small guys are actually worse.

I know that some people criticise this measure (£ per customer), but I don’t think there’s a better way to measure things. My logic goes like this.

We can’t fight climate change or create energy independence for the UK unless we build new sources of green electricity. The UK has about 5% today and needs say 50% ASAP. Electricity companies must take responsibility for that, they supply the stuff. We all use it so we have responsibility too.

It’s little use to a consumer of electricity (looking to choose the right company to be with) to quote the vague promises of future spend. Or the total spending in one year, because companies vary in size.

How much gets spent on behalf of each customer or in effect from each bill is a bang on way to represent the change that you can bring with your electricity bill, by switching to company X ,Y or Z. It empowers and cuts through the crap.

It’s actually an equal measure for companies of all sizes. And it can also be used to measure performance against the minimum legal targets.

The Big Six whinge when we use it – but guess what, two of them use it themselves. Scottish Power recently claimed to spend more per customer than any other ‘major supplier’ and Powergen did the same a few years ago.

In both cases they exclude Ecotricity from their ‘claims’ – they like the £ per customer, as long as it’s only between the big six.

Funny that.

Cheers.

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.

The attention has shifted now to the components on either side of the ring of bolts, the theory being that a failure somewhere else in the chain of components is at the root of things.

We’re expecting a final conclusion in a couple of weeks and hope to be able to publish the report in full here.

Meanwhile it’s sad but true to say it looks like we’ve not been visited by beings from another planet (unless you count the Sun reporters… ) and it wasn’t some kind of kill crazy flying tank from the MOD. A rather more mundane everyday kind of explanation appears to be emerging.

BTW this also means it wasn’t, def wasn’t, some kind of ball lightning or plasma – and of course not ice falling in cow sized lumps…

Shame in a way, the truth seems rather tame by comparison.

Cheers.

Where to start… OK – ROCs and REGOs.

ROCs derive from the UK’s Renewable Obligation that obliges all suppliers to hold certain small percentages of ROCs as a proxy for having green electricity in their mix – this % goes up each year by about 1% and is currently approaching 10% as an annual obligation.

ROCs are widely traded separately to power. For example the Big Six are always drastically short of ROCs and seek to buy them as stand alone bits of paper wherever they can.

Good Energy are also short of ROCs which seems odd when you think that they buy 100% green electricity from the markets and their obligation for ROCs is still in single figure percentages by contrast. The reason for that is that GE buy most of their power without ROCs.

Ecotricity is long in ROCs. This year our own green energy is over 50% of our fuel mix. The 37% figure BTW is last year – all Fuel Mix Disclosure is a year in arrears – because electricity supply isn’t complicated enough… So Ecotricity has over 50% ROCs and needs less than 10% – roughly speaking.

When financing windfarms the income from selling ROCs is half the total windfarm income – it’s a vital component. That’s one reason we think retiring ROCs is a crazy self defeating idea – ROCs are designed to make windfarms economically viable, so that more get built, and they do that well. To ‘retire them’ is close to self immolation … Well it is if you’re about building anyhow.

The other reason we’re against the practice is that it achieves nothing (except false hope) – the ASA have banned the claim that ROC retirement leads to more building – because GE and others have been unable to prove it. Won’t go into more here, it’s just something that sounds good in principle but in practice it’s nonsense.

So Ecotricity uses ROCs for what they are intended. GE uses them for greenwash IMO.

It’s the customer that pays for ROC retirement though.

ROC retirement is at least part of the reason that Good Energy are the UK’s most expensive electricity supplier. Or is it?

Anthony says Good Energy claim to retire 15% ROCs – the claims made by their team on the phone do indeed vary widely up to and beyond this amount. But the actual official claim is 5% of ROCs. This is the claim that GE made to NCC and to FOE et al for the last 5 years. NCC said this explains the (hefty) premium for Good Energy.

It doesn’t though – this amount of ROCs would cost about £25 per customer whereas the premium was £80 a year when NCC wrote that. (BTW it’s only £50 as of this week)

GE has been talking about building new green sources for 10 years or so, since the day they got started in energy supply. It may well happen one day. They came up with the idea of ROC retirement because it was something they could do and they needed a green story, an edge to claim greater greenness from. It’s not more than that. It’s an all but abandoned philosophy now.

There is more to this story though, something rotten at the heart of it all – coming soon.

Moving on to REGOs – these are certificates based on an EU wide scheme to verify and demonstrate the veracity of fuel source. Each unit of green generated gets one and each unit of green sold has to have one attached to them. Fuel Mix Disclosure is EU wide law and uses REGOs as evidence of source. REGOs are sold separate to power though. And it doesn’t matter for reasons of practicality/laws of physics.

This links to my comments that basically you buy non de script power in the wholesale markets, attach a REGO and it’s green. At its simplest this is because we can’t direct the flow of electrons to our customers and the grid system is a big mixing pot. Inputs are measured and can be offset against outputs – and that’s how the system works. But specific electricity can’t be delivered, so bits of paper are used to make sure that things like greenness are only sold once.

Moving on then to how many windmills will it take to power the UK. The rough rule of thumb that I use is it takes 1,000 MW to meet that 1% annual RO increment – it’s close but not forensic BTW.

On that basis we need 100,000MW of wind to power the whole UK – not allowing for issues of demand and supply balance – just total use.

That’s 50,000 of our 2MW machines, 33,000 of today’s typical 3MW machines and only 20,000 of the 5MW machines that are now appearing and will surely dominate in the future. Turbines up to 10MW are highly likely – that would obviously only take 10,000 – the reality will be a mixture of turbine sizes of course, as we build as we go.

As to land use – Many years ago an outfit called ETSU (gov quango..) undertook a study of the UK’s usable wind resource on land – and the word usable is important. They concluded that we had enough usable sites for wind energy to meet our entire electrical needs 3 to 4 times over. That was almost 20 years ago, with 20 year old technology.

Looking at it another way – on the question of spacing turbines – we reckon that in any given land area a wind farm will occupy just 1% of the land itself – due to spacing needs. Jeffrey calculates for us here that 1% of the UK’s land is 360,000 turbines – that’s 3 to 4 times the number of turbines my rule of thumb says we need for 100%. Which chimes with the ETSU study.

The big caveat that needs adding is of course supply and demand balancing – and let’s not forget energy use reduction.

I don’t disagree with Prof McKay on the need for us to reduce energy use, but I do disagree with his apparent fixation on that to the exclusion of actually building renewable forms of power. The two things are not opposing forces – they are reinforcing – we need to use less and make what we have to use, from renewables.

If we can reduce our consumption by 50% we need just 50,000 of today’s turbines and just 5,000 of tomorrows…. The UK has 2,500 already BTW (although smaller and older types)

There will still be supply and demand to balance though even under the best reduction scenario. For that we have the concept of Intelligent Demand, forget the days of dumb ‘energy on demand’ we can run the grid and our lives more efficiently. And we will.

I believe that the UK should generate way more than 100% of its needs from wind (onshore of course) and should export and/or usefully ‘dump load’ using large scale Intelligent Demand – because the ‘longer’ we are in terms of wind capacity (compared to needs) the more of the time that we will have enough when we need it – and also because we have so much wind – why not use it.

The fact that wind is free and clean (and endless) requires a new mindset to some degree – we need not be constrained by our total annual usage, let’s build 200% or 300% wind for example – generation will match demand more often/easily and there must be many good things we can do with that (surplus) energy. Just a thought.

I think that might cover most of the points! Cheers all.

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.

In my original post I (tried to… ) duck these issues with the opening gambit – ‘assume that on balance the Barrage is a good thing to do’. Because my real focus is not on the Barrage but on something else.

It’s the idea that the government, in this new world we might be in, could do something radical. Having expressed a desire to fund big infrastructure and with a long-standing policy aim to eradicate fuel poverty, it struck me that these threads could be pulled together. And we the public could become a power generator again.

I looked at the approximate economics of the `Barrage’ and it was clear that in conventional terms it would be challenging to build. And the way we try and deal with fuel poverty is just to keep bunging more money on the fire (so to speak). On their own, neither idea works very well, but when you put them together it’s a different story, it’s almost a piece of magic. The barrage can pay for itself, end fuel poverty and fund enormous sustainable infrastructure year in and year out. That was the gist of it.

I’ve had a bunch of e-mails as well as posts here from people telling me the Barrage is basically a bad idea – or worse, and I’m pushing the wrong thing and making a big mistake (or worse). I’m grateful for all that (honestly), but:

It’s based on a misunderstanding of what I’ve said.

I’m actually technology agnostic. I do believe that the Severn should be harnessed though, it’s too big a potential power source for us not to. And however it’s harnessed there will be impacts, and I believe that we have to accept that as a price we need to pay – the lesser of the two evils of not acting in my opinion.

Anyway, it seems there are several alternative approaches vying for attention and recognition. The Barrage of course, a Tidal Reef (which is the image above, thanks to Rupert Evans), Tidal Lagoons and of course straight forward Tidal Current Generators.

I just wanted to flag that up here, clarify where I’m coming from and thank everybody who has contributed to this discussion so far, thank you all.

The idea I’m putting forward will work equally well with any Severn Tidal scheme, indeed it will even work with Offshore wind – any big sustainable generation project could be tied to the Fuel Poverty program and achieve pretty much the same outcome.

In other news – Number 10 refused to host the petition we submitted last year, stating that “it is outside the scope of the Prime Minister or the Government”! It took a very long time to find this out, as their email to us ‘got lost in the post’.

Not sure who we are supposed to petition in that case… Obama? Cameron? Shame Jim’ll Fix It isn’t running any more

We have decided to run the petition anyhow, but here on the blog.

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.

It snowballed from there… that Thursday, the Sun carried the story on its front page, fuelling the fire by claiming a blade was missing (of course it wasn’t) and the rest of the herd followed. The story ran around the world and exploded on the Net.

My Thursday started with a call from Radio 4’s Today program, at some ungodly hour, and the rest of the day was given up wholly to more radio, TV and press interviews – it was thoroughly mad. All the main TV news programs ran with it, even the broadsheets got in on the act (The Guardian claiming responsibility for the lights in the sky…! Bless) It was the kind of coverage you’d love to get for a sensible story……

Some great comments on the web, really a lot of fun – here and elsewhere. Found this one on the Guardian website:

Cows give us BSE!
Cows fart loads, releasing methane and encouraging global warming!
Cows try to sabotage our attempts at producing carbon neutral energy!
BEWARE OF COWS – They are better organised than we think!

Tickled me that one did…

To be honest we had a lot of fun with this, and that took the edge off what was otherwise a serious and very bad event for us.

But what really happened?

There were no big obvious pointers on site. No signs of ice problems. There was no foreign or dare I say ‘alien’ debris on the ground to indicate a collision and no sign of a lightning strike either. Mind you, one blade was up in the air and the other a 1 tonne dead weight on the floor, so examination was limited. But we were stumped for an answer and in those first few days it made the incredible UFO strike theory just a little more credible.

The connector (which joins the blade to the hub) – on the downed blade was cut off and sent back to Germany for some more ‘forensic’ testing, mid last week. We’ve not had any results back yet, but we keep pushing.

Oh, BTW, none of the blades will be repaired, all three will be replaced with new.

The likely culprits of this are actually quite a short list: Ice, Lightning, Collision (UFO inc), Material failure, Design failure, Maintenance failure. There’s not more.

We’ve ruled out the first two pretty absolutely. Collision we can still see no evidence for, there should be some debris on the ground (surely) and some ‘exchange’ of materials on the blade surface. We’ll get to inspect the ‘bent’ blade today – the crane arrived to rebuild this machine. It is pretty probable though as people have said here, that the fallen blade hit and broke the second blade on the way down.

The testing of the fallen blade will determine if material failure was the cause, my own feeling is that it’s not, but let’s see.

As for design fault, there are thousands of this type of machine in use, and this is the first time this has happened. It seems very unlikely.

That leaves maintenance and we’re examining the machine very closely to establish the degree to which maintenance was properly undertaken by the manufacturer.

In so far as we’ve narrowed down the options, we are closer to an understanding of what happened. But we’re not there yet. We’re left with Collision and Materials or Maintenance failure.

As for UFOs? I believe absolutely that intelligent life exists in the universe. But I doubt (as someone may have said here) that if it could get here from another galaxy it would crash into a windmill – then again accidents will happen.

The 8 tonne MOD UAV, Taranis (would that make a good car name…?), has some merit as a possible culprit (Thanks for the stats on that Peta).

But the giant space tentacle was a bit beyond the pale for me, as was the idea that aliens wanted to steal our technology – having tramped squillions of light years to find us…

All good fun. But seriously UFOs are bottom of my probability list.

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

It’s got a lot going for it in that respect.

There are big questions over its impact on the ecology of the Severn Estuary, serious questions. These need balancing I think with the bigger ecological impacts of not doing enough to combat climate change.

But put that all aside for a minute and assume the Barrage is on balance a good thing to build.

At the same time the government spends £3 Billion per year on cash grants to pensioners and the fuel poor – people defined as spending 10% or more of their income on fuel. The electricity industry spends another £0.7 Billion, under pressure from the government of course.

At roughly £4 Billion – it’s a huge sum of money to spend each year. Especially to fight a losing battle, because energy costs are rising faster than standards of living – and there’s no end to that in sight.

Indeed as world energy prices rise, the amount that needs to be spent rises – just to stand still. And on two fronts – grant costs go up as energy bills go up and the number of qualifying homes goes up too.

It’s a thoroughly unsustainable situation.

And worse still (IMO) the current £3 Billion of public money goes straight into the pockets of the big six energy companies and from there to shareholders and global energy speculators. This annual £3 Billion achieves nothing but short term alleviation of a problem that just won’t go away, and won’t even stand still.

There’s a far better way to handle this – by building the Severn Barrage using public money!

And each year instead of giving cash grants – give fuel to the fuel poor.

The numbers more than stack up.

Almost £4 Billion per year saved at today’s energy prices – that’s about twice what the annual repayments of a £15 Billion loan would be if repaid over a pretty rapid 15 year period.

So we (the country) would be quids in on day one, about £2 Billion of them.

Fifteen years later, with the debt paid off – £4 Billion quids in – and that’s at today’s energy prices..! If energy prices only double in 15 years (a conservative scenario since they doubled this year..!) the surplus in year fifteen of this plan would be £8 Billion. But that’s not all:

The surplus energy, not given to the fuel poor – would be worth about £30 Million at today’s prices and the Barrage would generate a huge ROC income – some £850 Million per year. Plus LECs and REGOS, making a grand total further cash generation of £1 Billion, give or take. And all at today’s prices.

That’s £3 Billion annual cash surplus on day one – a conservative £9 or 10 Billion some fifteen years later – and that’s per year every year.

But that’s still not all:

The Barrage could power 5 million homes, that’s enough for all the UK’s ‘fuel poor’ the official and unofficial estimates – and some spare. And we’re not talking partial grants here, we’re talking total electricity needs met. A bigger help to the fuel poor than today’s ‘system’ – roughly twice as much help.

So the Barrage would wipe out fuel poverty, a long-standing government aspiration, do so in a way that is insulated from future fuel price rises, and generate a large revenue surplus to spend on other infrastructural projects – District heating for example.

Not to mention contribute 4% to the 40% national green electricity target (so 10% of the target) and save a shed load of CO₂ into the bargain.

The only losers in this will be the Big Six, boo hoo…

The failure of the banking system, for that read capitalism and ‘free markets’, opens the door to a new possibility – government intervention once more in issues that are of vital strategic (societal) importance. Like Energy.

The Government should become an energy generator (once again), stop paying huge sums to the big six each year (in cash grants), insulate itself, us and the fuel poor from future fuel price rises, take a massive step towards our national CO₂ targets, end fuel poverty completely and permanently – and generate a shed load of money for other infrastructure and sustainable development into the bargain – year in year out.

What are we waiting for? I’ll get my bucket and spade…

More info on the Severn Barrage

1. The Sustainable Development Commission report on tidal energy, “Turning the Tide” is a great starting place. The report examines in-depth the proposition for a Severn Barrage and also the possible application of tidal range, tidal stream and tidal lagoon technologies at other sites around the UK.
2. BERR’s F.A.Q. about Severn Tidal Power. This covers plans for the government’s feasibility study and various systems such as tidal barrages and lagoons, plus answers most questions. Everything from how much it will generate to flood protection. The only problem with this site is that it is all text and could do with a few pictures!
3. The Wikipedia Severn Barrage article is a good springboard in various directions (including negative aspects), but like all Wiki articles you just have to remember that anyone could have written this stuff. On the up side, it does have some pictures which is a bonus.

Online petition. Add your voice

We’ve set up an online petition here. Please add your voice. Also – an update to this post has been published here, which clarifies some of the issues raised in comments on this post.

Did an interview with BBC’s Watchdog the other day, they came to visit us here in Stroud. They’ve been on a bit of a crusade against the Big 6 by all accounts – and now they’ve decided to take a look at us Indies – to see if we offer an alternative!

They asked the ‘Green/Brown price’ question… which isn’t easy to answer in a soundbite or two but I did my best! You never know how these things will turn out – it’s all in the edit.

The piece is going out on the show on Monday 24th November, BBC1, 7.30pm.

May have something to say about it here on Tuesday – as may you..?

Watchdog page for the episode can be found here (should be updated following broadcast with video etc)

A bunch of crazy guys have been doing just that this weekend, from our turbine at Ecotech Swaffham, the world’s first ever legal base jump off a windmill apparently. In fact this is the final round of UK Pro Base championships 2008.

Hot off the virtual press is this video:

Modern parachutes are amazing, just 80m to open and land – on a target!

A bunch of us have abseiled of the turbine at Ecotech before, and we thought that was pretty cool, and ‘out there’… but this is whole nother level.

Even if they do make it look easy. Fair play.

Source video by Hot Under The Collar
Music ‘Carcinogens’ by Sawtooth

You may remember a post I wrote entitled “Why green electricity prices go up when brown prices do” in which I first attempted to explain this seemingly counter-intuitive situation.

I also recently wrote to all of our customers explaining that we needed to follow the recent price rises (of the Big Six) and why. In it I tried to provide a simple explanation of why green electricity prices go up when brown electricity prices do. I received a number of e-mails and letters from customers who had further questions about that and related issues.

I’ve spent the last few nights considering how best to approach this and writing what follows below – it’s a more detailed explanation of why our prices need to follow the market (for now). I hope in the process to better explain the way the electricity market works, how this affects what we do and at the same time cover the majority of questions asked.

Here we go…

Perhaps a bit too simple

In my letter I gave a simplified version of why we had to put our prices up to match the Big Six, which focussed on the fact that green and brown prices go up together. A number of our customers pointed out that they accepted this for energy from the market but Ecotricity self-generates 30% of its own energy from windmills. A good point.

The letter required a simplified explanation of things because for one thing most people don’t want the nth degree of detail and for another we had just the one sheet of paper to work with (ideally) and a lot of other information to include. All letters require some form of compromise on detail.

Here, I’ve no such constraints. Best be seated with a cup of tea when you tackle this…

Types of questions asked

I had e-mails from both New Energy and New Energy Plus customers, with the same question at their heart.

A number of our New Energy customers read the price rise letter and said ‘OK we get that green and brown electricity prices go up together, but 30% of our electricity (the green part) is self-generated from the wind, why has the price of that gone up?” and that’s a very fair question (the answer to which is coming).

Other customers said “I’m on your 100% tariff (New Energy Plus) so why are my prices going up at all?” I tried to be clear about this in the price rise letter – basically green and brown prices go up together, just because it’s green doesn’t make it immune to price rises – if it comes from the market it’s linked to the price of brown. And for our 100% tariff – 70% of the green comes from the market. That’s further explained below.

In the market – there’s only one price for electricity

For both of our tariffs, 70% of the electricity we supply to you comes from the market – with New Energy, the 70% is brown electricity and with New Energy Plus the 70% is green electricity.

The first thing I want to try and make clear is that this 70% – in both cases – goes up and down with the market price. It absolutely does, there’s nothing we can do about that – and the reasons are that the market sets the price for electricity at one level – green or brown, coal, gas, oil or nuclear – it doesn’t matter where it comes from or what it costs to produce (and they all have different costs to produce) – there’s only one price to buy.

When you buy green electricity what you actually do is buy non-descript (brown in reality) electricity from the market and you buy something called a REGO to go with it. A REGO is Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin certificate – something that is issued to generators for each unit of green they produce and which is used to ensure that greenness is only sold once – it’s a European-wide standard. And it works.

This is important to understand. The market sets one price for electricity, be it from coal, oil, gas, nuclear or green – there’s one price only. To buy green, you buy electricity and add a REGO, or you buy electricity with a REGO – either way you pay a brown price for the electricity and a price for the REGO – it’s the same end result.

So for the 70% that we top up our New Energy tariff from the brown market, we pay the market price and for the 70% we top up New Energy Plus from the ‘green market’ we pay the market price – and there’s nothing we can do about it. With New Energy Plus we also pay 0.5p per unit, which is the premium on this tariff – for the REGO. This makes the 70% top up green.

That’s my first point. 70% of our power, whichever tariff you may be on with us, is linked absolutely to market prices.

What about the electricity we generate ourselves?

Leaving the very good question that a number of customers have asked “so what about the 30% green electricity that Ecotricity generates itself, why does that become more expensive?” It’s an excellent question.

And this is where the simplified explanation in my letter (the O level version?) falls over – we need the A level version. For that we have to dive into the complexities of energy trading. Here we go –

Our price policy and promise is to match the price of brown energy from the Big Six. In that we think we’ve got a simple and fair position. Green for the price of brown and our total commitment to new build thrown in. We also assume that we can operate within the margins the Big Six set for themselves, we set ourselves the goal to do that, and invest those record amounts in new build at the same time.

But there are several costs that we bear that the Big Six don’t, because of their size and their purchasing power. There are other costs we bear when supplying our own green electricity, that are additional to the cost of supplying brown electricity. Two basic areas where we lose out when matching their price.

Hedging

The first is about ability to purchase power ahead of time – it’s called hedging. We reckon most of the Big Six are hedged between six and twelve months forwards. This means that when the market price for electricity goes up, they are largely unaffected for a period of time – I’d guess a good six months. And this is bourne out to some degree by the delays we see between wholesale (market) prices going up and then retail (Big Six) prices following. I think they move while they still have some hedged myself, and this may be supported by the reported rise in profits that often accompany a rise in retail prices – that the Big Six say are ‘only’ to match their purchasing costs – there’s an overlap basically.

But there’s a lag too, from our point of view.

To buy energy on the forward market and therefore fix the price you need large sums of cash unless you have a top credit rating (which all the Big Six have). As a small independent you need cash. You also need cash to pay security deposits for the costs of transmission and distribution and for the costs of balancing (more on that in the second category here) – in short you need a lot of cash tied up. The fact is small independents cannot hedge to the extent that the Big Six can and do. So when market prices rise our costs rise more quickly, because we buy from the market much more immediately than the Big Six do. Six months later maybe, the Big Six put their prices up and we follow. Our costs are now better matched by our sales prices but for six months we’ve been losing significantly.

That’s how it works in a rising market. Our prices, because of our policy to match the Big Six, only go up months after our costs have done so, and when I said in that letter that we would have had to put our prices up soon if the Big Six hadn’t – I absolutely meant it.

The need to balance

The second category of costs we absorb, that don’t exist for the Big Six and their brown tariffs (the prices of which we match) are the costs of supplying green electricity. These are essentially costs of balancing.

The wind of course blows when it does, and stops when it stops. That’s the nature of wind energy. Across the whole grid it’s no big deal, there’s plenty of supply and demand movement to smooth things out. But as a supplier we have to balance what our customers take from the grid, with what we put into the grid – every half hour of every day of the year.

When we fail to balance, and it’s inevitable for all suppliers but more so for small ones (that’s due to statistics and the error probabilities of large and small data sets – plus the added issue of variable wind), we find ourselves in the ‘balancing market’ which is the market of last resort – it’s also a penalty market. You either buy (if you have too little) or sell (if you have too much) at very bad prices.

We all take electricity when we want it, night or day, whatever the weather. We take that for granted. But wind energy is intermittent and is far harder to match to customer demand – almost impossible. So we buy and sell (our wind and our imbalance) through the short term (or ‘prompt’) market and through the balancing market. When our electricity goes through either market like this two things happen – suddenly there’s a link to the market price (from something we generated ourselves and should in simple theory be immune to that) and there’s a ‘buy sell spread’ that we are exposed to (like when you buy or sell currency for your holiday) as well as the balancing penalty which can be very significant. And the higher the market price the higher the penalties, they travel together. And therefore the ‘price’ of our own green electricity is suddenly hitched to the market price. And we have increased costs.

So, there’s two areas where our costs are bigger than the Big Six and both impact our ability to separate the price of our own green electricity from the market price.

The absolute truth

This is the best I can do to explain how things work. I’ve been in electricity for over ten years. It’s the most complex thing I’ve ever been involved in and I’m not sure I fully get it yet.

But I promise you all when I say we need to match Big Six prices to carry on doing what we do. I’m telling you the absolute truth. We’re not profiteering in any way whatsoever. Our margins this year will be worse than last for sure, we currently estimate 30% lower. But we will carry on, matching the brown price, working within (and below) the margins the Big Six get – and spending record amounts building new sources of green electricity. I still think that’s a great achievement.

And one day, when we have sufficient of our own green electricity (a much higher proportion) and when we have a way to better handle balancing costs (we have plans for generation side management to smooth the peaks and troughs) – we will be able to detach ourselves from the brown prices of the Big Six and from the market and give our customers a discount for their green electricity. That’s our intention. We will at that time be cheaper than the Big Six.

I hope this explanation gives a better insight into the many factors we wrestle with every day to bring you green electricity and continual investment in new green sources – and of course electricity when you want it. And a better insight into our plans for the future.

I hope this explanation won’t be taken as overly complex – I’ve tried to be thorough. To nail this issue.

Cheers.

The first vision was of an internet café style ‘park and surf while you charge’ kind of thing. Looked cool, not a bad first stab, but on further examination – it wasn’t it.

The second vision is an abandoned, moss grown relic. The gist of this vision is that with modern battery ranges of 200 miles + and given that 99.5% of car journeys are less than 100 miles – all we need is some destination charging, in supermarket and public car parks, motorway services, that kind of stuff for long journeys and when we get caught short – and for the most part we’ll be able to plug in at home. We won’t need garages.

This raises the very important question – can the grid take it? Can we switch the entire energy consumption of UK cars – from petrol stations to the grid? By the way the combined power output of the UK car fleet is bigger than the total power output of the grid. So it might be a problem.

We crunched some numbers and came up with this:

In the UK we drive 250 Billion miles in our cars every year…! Seriously.

It’s reasonable to assume that an electric car can do 5,000 miles on one MWh of electricity.

Therefore we would need an additional 50TWh of electricity annually, to power the UK’s cars – if they were all electric.

In 2006 total demand on the grid was 404TWh, so the extra 50TWh we’d need would amount to a 12% increase in grid delivered power. Just 12%. That’s actually four years of annual UK demand growth to give it some perspective. Not so much.

It would take very roughly 10,000 of today’s turbines to produce this 50 TWh and so power all our cars. It’ll be less then that by the time it happened of course because turbines keep getting bigger and more efficient.

In the process we’d save 69 Million tonnes of CO2 per year – that’s 60% of UK road transport emissions and 12% of total UK CO2 emissions. No small achievement.

I was pretty staggered by the results. There are after all nearly 30 million cars in the UK (that’s more cars than homes by the way, about 25% more) and we drive that crazy 250 Billion miles – there was a good chance, I thought, that the extra power demand would be more than the grid could cope with. But an extra 12% is well within the realms of the possible.

It’s worth bearing in mind that most car charging will probably be overnight, the time of lowest grid demand, and therefore we can probably deliver this extra 12% volume without a need to increase the actual capacity of the grid. And such a large overnight load could result in a considerable smoothing of the peaks and troughs of demand on the grid and in the process make the grid more efficient cost and CO2 wise.

And an electric car fleet for the UK could also help with the smoothing of intermittent renewables like wind energy, because for the most part car charging will be non-critical loads, non-time sensitive that is. 30 Million cars could act like vast distributed energy storage system, able to take power when the wind blows and able to manage without when it doesn’t. It could even give power back to the grid at times of need.

All interesting stuff. But one thing is clear – the idea that we could all drive electric cars, powered by existing infrastructure – the grid, looks very (very) doable.

And the alternative vision, of the oil companies – building a new hydrogen infrastructure and for us all to keep on visiting their garages to fill our cars up (for which we’d need three times as many windmills and three times as much additional electricity to achieve the same thing by the way) – is looking more like our second vision of garages of the future – a moss grown relic, though not yet abandoned…

…OFGEM’s idea for regulating green electricity tariffs is to ban them!

Their new rules will ensure customers can’t get real green tariffs in the UK – all they’ll be able to get will be ‘green’ tariffs where trees get planted or carbon gets offset – cuddly, stupid, and quite pointless ‘green’ tariffs.

This is how OFGEM think they’re going to straighten out consumer confusion – by redefining green tariffs as being about anything but investment in new sources of green electricity.

Here’s a bit of background -

OFGEM decided a while ago that customers are confused, that they’re not clear on the benefits that green electricity tariffs really bring and this is preventing larger scale take up (of green tariffs) – so they’ve decided to intervene, after 12 years of doing nothing at all in this sector, and set up an accreditation system that will give customers confidence in what they are being offered.

Sounds fair enough and who could object to that? Not us certainly, not in principle. But in their press release OFGEM left out the details that count, they probably didn’t want to spoil a good story.

Before we get into that, one thing that tickled us -

OFGEM said the system will be voluntary. Er, except that, in the same press release, OFGEM made it quite clear that if the industry does not ‘voluntarily’ adopt the scheme – it will modify supply licences to make it mandatory. Oh that kind of voluntary… silly us.

It’s a marvelous new scheme, unveiled by press release, voluntary in a Soviet Union kind of way – and just six weeks to go before kick off. Who says that Quangos don’t know how to get things done…?

The vital bit of information the press release left out -

OFGEM’s big idea is to accredit tariffs on a ‘bronze, silver and gold’ basis, based on how much money gets spent per customer per year – it’s a fabulous idea, we’ve been pushing the use of spending per customer to cut through corporate green BS for many years. We suggested the very same thing to OFGEM and we’ve been publishing the spending figures of all the UK’s suppliers each year at whichgreen.org.

There’s a ‘But’ though, and it’s huge.

Under OFGEM’s proposed rules electricity companies can spend money on anything they like (pretty much) except, guess what… Building new sources of green electricity. We kid you not.

You’ll be able to buy tariffs that plant trees, carbon offset (yes seriously), pay money into vague funds, promote energy efficiency (help old ladies across the road? not quite) – just about anything with an environment claim to its name – except the one thing that’s really needed and the one thing green tariffs are supposed to be all about – Green Electricity. You won’t be able to get any of that.

Honestly, that’s their big idea. We couldn’t have made this up.

And the probable outcome -

OFGEM is going to mandate Greenwash. That’s what ‘green tariffs’ will become. Greenwash forced on green consumers, mandated and authenticated. And OFGEM will ban real green tariffs into the bargain. Well, ban them from being called green anyway.

Green electricity tariffs will become some kind of charity ghetto where customers elect to pay premiums to see contributions made on their behalf, to the cause of their choice. Be that tree planting, rainforest preservation, protecting wildlife – whatever. Good enough causes no doubt, but this isn’t what green tariffs are supposed to be about.

The one thing customers won’t be able to get is a real green tariff, one that dedicates itself to actually building more green electricity – and one with green electricity in it. How on earth that makes sense we don’t know.

Ecotricity founded the now global green electricity movement. We’ve done as much as anybody and more than most to promote it and make it appeal to a wide audience.

We spend each year more than ten times enough money per customer to qualify for OFGEMs puny gold standard – but we won’t be ‘allowed’ to describe our tariffs as green. Even though that money goes into building new sources of green electricity, the stuff we desperately need.

What more can we say.

OFGEM are going to set mandatory rules for green tariffs to be regulated by – and green electricity won’t qualify.

That’ll make things easier for customers to understand – you can have anything in your OFGEM approved ‘green’ tariff – except green electricity.

It’s the stuff of legend.

The answer is in the numbers, it has to be. How does micro generation stack up against the alternatives, in cost of carbon saved and of energy provided? Here’s the answer.

There are really only two micro generation technologies worth considering, PV and Wind. Others may come along, like CHP, but for now it’s the stuff of legend – try getting your hands on one.

PV – costs £5k per installed kW, and will typically make 1 MWh per year in the UK. Broadly speaking.

A typical micro Wind turbine of 1kW will cost £2k to install and will produce virtually nothing in an urban setting. This is the situation with the first generation of micro wind.

But second generation machines are coming – let’s use those as a better example.

Micro Wind 2.0 – should cost about £3k for a 1kW machine, which might produce about 1MWh per year. This is best case though, and it may not happen.

Compare these figures to what I call Macro generation – Big Wind.

Big Wind – costs £1k per installed kW and will typically make about 3 MWh per annum.

So that’s one fifth the cost of PV and 3 times the output – 15 times cheaper.

And one third the cost of micro Wind 2.0 and 3 times the output – 9 times cheaper.

These cost ratios apply equally to the cost of energy produced and the cost of carbon saved.

These are the cold hard facts, what you pay and what you get.

Does it make sense to pay up to 15 times more for renewable energy than we need to?

There’s only so much money we can throw at anything, climate change and renewables included. And whatever budget we set for PV, we could build 15 times more renewables, save 15 times more carbon – with Big Wind.

So why does micro gen feature so prominently in ‘government planning’ (if that’s not an oxymoron)?

It’s about political cowardice. Big Wind needs politicians to face down NIMBYs, they’re afraid to, so instead they talk up Offshore wind (costs a mere twice as much as Onshore) and the cuddly voter friendly micro generation – every roof top should have one. But consider this….

1% of the UK’s electricity from Big Wind might cost £1 Billion.

On the same basis that 1% from PV would cost £15 Billion.

10% from wind would cost £10 Billion.

10% from PV would cost £150 Billion.

So for the cost of 10% from PV we could have 150% of our electricity from wind!

It’s crazy to be even considering large scale micro generation deployment in the face of these numbers.

It’s the most expensive way to save carbon even including building new nuclear power stations! If we had no other options then fine, but we’ve not even scratched the surface of our Big Wind potential.

It’s time to be honest about micro generation – I think the Emperor is naked.

light of the fact that the Daily Mail didn’t publish my response to this collection of misinformation by Christopher Booker in a timely fashion – I thought I would reconstruct my comments here, where the editorial policy is slightly more balanced. Note to Christopher – feel free to comment here!

This is a piece of hysterical nonsense from Christopher Booker. It’s hard to know where to start.

Did the planning inspector really throw out all planning rules when he approved that turbine near where Christopher lives – just so we can meet EU targets?

Of course not.

Read his report and you’ll see he discarded the spurious reasons for refusal of the local council and actually upheld planning policy.

And do we really need to build new conventional generators to back up new wind generators as we build them? Simple intelligence should tell us not. As new wind generators get built they replace conventional sources (when the wind blows) and those conventional sources become the stand-by that wind needs (for when the wind does not blow).

Pretty simple really.

And that 90% figure is rubbish. I won’t go on. This piece by Christopher Booker is personal prejudice masquerading as journalism. Too often that seems to be the definition of tabloid articles….

“Revealed: UK’s blueprint for a green revolution”

So – we may actually be entering into a second industrial revolution if the government gets stuck in with that £100 billion. They’re making all the right noises…

But … the fact remains – we have to cope with a planning system not fit for purpose. In 1999 the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities first identified that the planning process is a “grave hindrance to achieving the necessary growth in renewables”. Nearly ten years on and nothing has changed –the planning system still remains the most significant barrier to achieving the delivery of wind energy.

It’s the only major generation source that depends for planning on District Councils – the government deals with all others for very good reasons.

Lord Adair Turner suggested that there may be a tweak in the planning process to ‘unstick’ more wind projects following my little piece on Radio4’s PM on Friday.

The planning bill was debated yesterday – it’s been heralded as the cure for all planning’s ills but it still leaves the majority of wind projects in planning hell while at the same time smoothing the way for New Nuclear and nice new runways.

With all this on his plate Prime Minister Brown couldn’t quite stop himself from running off to OPEC, asking ever so politely if it would be possible to “keep the price of oil down a little bit please … while I try and sort out our little energy problem” … and also to ask them if they wouldn’t mind investing some of their trillions of profit in ‘our’ nuclear programme…

It also seems there has also been no better time to be looking at electric transport (well – it would have been better to be looking at it a century ago, but better late than never!):

“Electric cars given official green light to boost climate change goals”

Most eco-towns are being turned down or criticised for lack of coherent transport policy.

Dyson has just entered the electric vehicle game… (I hope his cars don’t suck!)
It turns out Dyson is not entering the electric vehicle game!

McCain puts bounty on batteries

For those people who travel less than 30 or 40 miles to work (well more like 15 or 20 if you can’t charge at the other end) – a sub £1000 electric scooter has arrived in the UK.

Finally there is an interesting piece from The Register – it’s an analysis of a draft book by Professor David J C MacKay of the Cambridge University Department of Physics, which attempts to do some real number crunching when it comes to looking at our future energy choices. The draft e-book is available here – it makes interesting and thought provoking reading if nothing else. I haven’t had time to check his figures though!

The UK have had big plans before, though not this big – what we’ve always been missing is the guts to make them happen, to drive the change needed. That’s why we’ve missed targets before and why we’ll miss them again. Talk is one thing (and we’ve had plenty of it, low carbon economy this, climate change biggest threat that……. and so on) what we need is action.

Offshore costs twice as much to generate from so unless huge sums of public money are being set aside – it won’t happen. And onshore is blocked by the planning system and unless the government intends to get to grips with this simple reality – again it won’t happen.

The biggest potential we have comes from onshore wind, yet two thirds of all wind projects are refused by District Councils at the planning stage, and two thirds are upheld by the government at appeal – a lot of bad decisions being overturned, eventually.

It usually takes between three to five years, costs an awful lot of time and money just to get a simple decision. Wind is our big opportunity – it’s our new North Sea Oil. We’ve enough to run the country three or four times over and it’s stuck in a planning system that’s not fit for purpose and wasn’t designed for it.

Went on Radio 4’s PM show last week to bring this up with Adair Turner. Not often you get to put the questions direct to those who have the power to change the situation. Here’s hoping Brown et al actually achieve something this time …

It’s not un-common to hear people say ‘We need Feed in Tariffs in the UK, like they have in Germany – they’ve got umpteen Gigawatts of renewables from it’. And fair enough they do. It’s important not to confuse large scale FITs with micro though.

The problem for onshore wind (large scale) in the UK is planning not financial and therefore FITs just can’t help. We need German planning laws to emulate German success, in large scale wind.

But what about micro generation; Are feed in tariffs the answer to better deliver this?

Planning used to be a barrier to micro generation but no longer. The problem is just that the numbers don’t stack up. It’s a financial problem, the territory of FITs.

German FITs pay well for micro generation – more than 30p per unit. No wonder much more gets built there than here with our 10p or so. That’s how it works. It’s nothing to do with it being an easy system to use or anything else, just much more money.

But multiple ROCs would do the same job here. They recently doubled and it would be easy enough to have them quadruple (to emulate the value of German FITs) – much easier than to set up a new scheme. And here’s why.

Export from home generation cannot be economically metered, so the ‘system’ cannot attribute it to individual suppliers, it just reduces grid losses. FITs require an electricity distribution company to pay for the power, one who operates the grid – and who then passes on the cost to electricity suppliers working in that region. That’s how it works in Germany. It would be complex to set up and run – compared to multiple ROCs. And it would require new legislation, no small issue.

And would FITs for micro generation give us shed loads of renewables, like Germany? Well yes and no – it would be a boost, but let’s not overestimate how much they have in Germany – from micro gen. Germany’s incredible 12% renewables contribution is often described as coming from ‘wind and solar’ – giving the impression that solar (micro generation) plays a large part. It doesn’t.

Solar actually makes up 0.3% of Germany’s electricity – wind and other large scale renewables produce 11.7%. Put another way micro generation makes up just 4% of the electricity supported under FITs in Germany. It’s good but not as good as it’s cracked up to be.

FITs are good at stimulating micro generation simply because they pay well. Money is really what stimulates micro generation. FITs are a mechanism that works in Germany to provide that money, they could be made to work here but not easily. Whereas multiple ROCs could readily do the same job. The system and the legislation is in place and it works in a UK market context. There’s nothing clever about FITs, they just pay well. That’s easy to emulate. You’d think.

Our German friends do have something we lack – commitment to renewables. That’s what we need. German style commitment to Planning for large wind that works and Finance for micro generation that works.