The Epic Search for Renewable Energy at Home

In theory, switching to renewable energy is easy. You don't need an electrician, or to install any fancy gadgets, and in some cases you don't even need to change suppliers. But in practice it is not so easy sorting out exactly how 'green' the energy you are purchasing is, and not every supplier is the same.

From what I can tell there are three different options for purchasing renewable electricity (although there are about fifteen names for each of these options).

The first, and best, option is to purchase 'green electricity' or "energy based tariff". Even though you still draw the same energy off of the grid, this is the closest you get to actually having renewable energy run into your PC. The way it works is that a proportion of what you pay will be matched by the equivalent amount of renewable energy being fed into the national grid. If you live in London, this means that someone in Cornwall (or wherever renewable power generation is viable) will receive the amount of energy that you use from renewables. Your current provider probably won't offer this but you can easily switch to one that will. I'm told that www.good-energy.co.uk is a very good one if you're in the UK.

The second option is to upgrade to "green pricing" which is a bit of an ambiguous category but it generally means that you pay, on top of your current energy bills, a small subsidy that goes towards the development of new renewable capacity or capacity-related issues such as the Green Grid mentioned in one of my earlier blogs. From what I can tell this general category is specifically for energy products in the UK, or whatever country you are in but I am really not sure. As you might expect, it seems that the accountability here is a bit iffy.

The third option is to independently purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECS). This is basically personal carbon offsetting in which either new renewable energy sources are sponsored or trees are planted somewhere in the world. This may let you live a little less guilt free life, but has been criticized widely for its lack of accountability and the issues around what renewable energy projects are actually 'new'. Most of the mainstream providers have plans for these last two although in practice it is very hard to tell exactly what you're getting yourself into.

Okay, those are the basics. I am going to try to sign myself up to a new plan and I'll let you know how it goes. If you can help clarify or have any experiences let me know. I've spent a while just getting here and looking at the plans for EDF and others, I think I've got a heck of a lot more work cut out for me!