Changing electricity providers part IV

So we received our welcome pack from Ecotricity last week. It had no information about which tariff we were on, but did include a leaflet about the rates on their Economy 7 tariff. So, not unreasonably, I assumed we were on that tariff. I called them to find out and had a very confusing conversation with a lady there about what all the tariffs used to be called and what they were now, which culminated in her assuring me that we were on the 100% green one.

So, Dale, eco-hero,

• Why don't you let people choose their tariff more easily when they sign up? Why do you completely hide the New Energy Plus (all-green option)?
  
• Why are you not telling me what tariff I AM on in the welcome letter, to avoid me calling your offices and wasting your time?
• Why are you including sheets of information about tariffs that I am not on?
• And, most importantly, why are you sending me a paper-based welcome pack?? I am clearly a person of green persuasion, as you are, all I really want is an email telling me when to take a meter reading and referring me to your website for the PR puff.
  
• And a paper DD form? Sort it out! Everyone else manages to do this online...
  

Ecotricity is a great company and I believe they are the most green option out there, but they are letting themselves down by not encouraging people to take the 100% green option (and therefore getting more money for Ecotricity's good work), and also by wasting resources in the setting up of accounts.

New toy

I've bought a little gadget that you can plug into your electrical socket to measure how much electricity is being used. I'm going to use this to answer some of the questions I have around recommendations I have seen bandied around -

• How much energy really does a mobile phone charger use when it is just left plugged in?
  
• Or when the phone has finished charging?
  
• Is it better to turn your PC off, or put it on standby (or hibernate), avoiding the allegedly power-hungry start-up cycle?
  
• Is the standby LED on your TV really that bad?
  

Are these potential energy savings really significant? Watch this space...

Offsetting

After flying out to Italy for weekend skiing (which involved a heated outdoor pool and a sauna) I was feeling pretty bad about my carbon footprint (but it was brilliant!). So, carbon offsetting. Good or bad?

I've always worried that companies just buy forests to absolve their guilt/pacify their shareholders, and that they feel this absolves them from doing anything about their energy usage - like permission to pollute. Clearly this is wrong, reduction of direct and indirect carbon emissions must be the priority. But I've come round to the point of view that, while you should first reduce what you can, some carbon emissions are hard to avoid. Yes I know, I could refuse to fly for work, and only holiday in Cornwall. But this blog is about practical, realistic steps that normal people can take to reduce their impact on the environment, not about starting an eco hippy commune with a composting toilet. So, I'm still going to fly.

But I've read about offsetting companies planting the wrong kind of trees, messing up local ecosystems etc. And I'm not that convinced about planting trees. How do they work out how many trees to plant? What time period do they "pay back" over? And most offsetting companies are American, and I'd like to do something more local.

So this is what I found out:

• Native Energy manage the offsetting for An Inconvenient Truth, which seemed like a good place to start. They are very US centric, but had some useful pointers:
• Some offsetters let you invest in renewable energy projects such as wind turbines, or projects to reduce methane emissions from cow farms (methane has 24 times the carbon emission impact of CO2!) not just tree planting.
  
• Look for offsetters that support new renewable energy projects - this helps build demand for green projects.
• Look at who benefits from the project - for example Native Energy support native Indian communities by employing them to build the new energy projects, which might appeal to some.
  
• If you want to know how offsetting is calculated - here's their explanation.
• Closer to home, Climate Care had a good placement on Google. 80% of their offsetting is from carbon reduction projects, 20% from carbon sequestration (protecting and regenerating rainforests).
  
• They invest in projects globally, and have a broad portfolio of projects, all have a community involvement theme. For example, replacing diesel pumps with human -powered pumps in India, using crop waste instead of fossil fuels, investing in efficient lighting, along with your usual building wind turbines.
  
• They think my flight to San Francisco created 2.47 tonnes of CO2 and it will cost me £18.53 to offset.
  
• They've won an Ashden award (who reward the best examples of community-based sustainable energy around the world), presented by Prince Charles, so they must be ok....
• Carbon Clear offer calculators to work out how much to offset - including one for your baby's nappies. Nice idea! I liked their principles for project selection:
• Projects must be efficient.
• Projects must have additional, long-term benefits to the communities that undertake them.
• Projects should follow the spirit of the Kyoto agreement. Projects must make measurable pollution reductions over and above their normal level, and it is only this additional benefit to the environment that Carbon Clear supports.
• But they just invest in reforestation, with little choice of project.
  
• They wanted £13.50 for a transatlantic return flight (1.5 tonnes), I think I am closer to the £23.50 for a South African flight (2.8 tonnes).
• Ecobusiness links compares different UK and US providers on cost and style of offsetting. This made me realise I'm not that price sensitive, but I do like a choice of project. Also that it is a good idea to look for independent certification / validation that they are doing good stuff. Which lead me back to...
• The Carbon Neutral Company, which does what it says on the tin. They are business-oriented, but offer some products for consumers.
  
• They are audited by KPMG and verified by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management and a special Independent Advisory Committee, and they've worked with overr 200 big companies in the 10 years they've been going.
  
• They take a similar approach mainlining on carbon reduction with 20% support for forestation projects. I liked their Carbon Neutral Protocol (pdf), which specifies that their projects must include measuring and monitoring the carbon offset
• And their clear project selection guidelines for technology projects.
• You can offset specific flights, driving, your home, or just go for a package to offset all your CO2 ("Carbon Neutral Citizen").
  

I'm planning to do some more research here, but in the mean time, I am convinced by the Carbon Neutral Company's professionalism and accountability.

Annoyingly, you can't add up multiple offenses (e.g. several flights + car), or just enter in the number of tonnes you want to offset. I wanted to offset about 11 tonnes (all my flights + car usage from last year), so I played with the Carbon Neutral Citizen thing until I found a country where the average CO2 emissions per person were 11 tonnes (Former Soviet Republic), and went for that.

I could chose to invest in one of three portfolios, which each gave more info about the projects and how the offset is calculated.

• planting trees in the UK - indigenous trees within long term woodlands which have public access (£78)
• investing in new technologies (wind turbines in NZ and Jamaica) (£80)
  
• or international community projects (solar lighting in India, orchard planing in India) (£97)
  

I really wanted wind turbines in the UK. But I guess I am already supporting them through Ecootricity. So I went for the the international technology, which looked like a fast and long-term return. And maybe I can visit the wind turbine in NZ when I go there later this month - after generating 2.5 odd tonnes of CO2 on my flight over there...

Calculating my carbon footprint

I wanted to work out my baseline carbon footprint (tonnes of CO2 produced from the burning of hydrocarbons in my everyday life) , so I can see the impact of making changes. There are loads of carbon calculators out there, the ones which were most UK-centric and that I found useful were:

• an article by a home eco-auditor in the Independent which has the multiplication factors to work out tonnes of CO2 from different sources.
  
• the Carbon Neutral website, which has a carbon calculators for most areas including a very comprehensive flights area.
• a carbon footprint calculator from a UK company called Carbon Footprint. This also gave figures for secondary (indirect) carbon consumption - carbon emissions involved in your food & drink, clothes, public services etc. These are not calculated, just average UK figures. They also gave typical values for UK households so you can see how you compare... I want to do some more digging around this, I don't know how average my secondary usage is.
  
• BP provide a very flashy carbon calculator (which gave my lowest CO2 emissions estimate - it's almost like they want you not to worry about it...).
  

The sources all gave different answers for my direct footprint, +/- 3 tonnes CO2. I've gone with the upper values to be conservative (which were from the carbon footprint site). Here are my numbers:



And in graph form... (click to enlarge)



In working this out, I was surprised by a few things:

• That our car usage (which I had always regarded as modest - mainly weekends away, 10k miles in the year) - was the single biggest contributor to my personal direct footprint, weighing in with a massive 1.4 tonnes of CO2.
  
• That my gas usage (cooking and heating) contributes 73% more CO2 than electricity.
• That our gas and electricity usage were below the national averages - probably because we are never in!

I was not surprised that my business flights (two trips to the US and two to Europe) bumped my total footprint to 75% over the UK average.

So, I've got my work cut out! The next few posts are going to cover:

• Primary personal footprint - reducing energy usage where I can.
• Primary business footprint - asking my work what they are doing to reduce unecessary flights, and offsetting necessary ones.
• Secondary footprint - finding viable choices to reduce my secondary footprint, and working out what I can do to persuade companies and the government to do the same.
• ... and offsetting the rest.
  

Go green guides

Just found this site Treehugger. It's a a cluttered, overwhelming site with thousands of green articles and even more ads (and very right-on in a hyper-American type way), but I thought it was worth spreading the word about their series of guides on how to get greener. I'll be picking out some of their more practical ideas here and telling you about the results (I didn't find building my own eco-friendly house that actionable a suggestion right now...).

Investing for a better world part I

(quick diversion from global warming to global poverty)

Today I discovered Kiva, a non-profit site that aggregates microfinance requests from organisations representing individuals in developing countries (more about how they work). You choose a specific individual who you want to lend the money to, how much you want to lend, and pay by PayPal or credit card. You can take a portfolio approach, investing a little in a range of businesses to spread the risk (each loan request is fulfilled by multiple donors). You get emails through the course of the loan updating you on the progress of your debtor, and at the end of the loan duration you can reinvest or withdraw.

Realistically, I'm not the best person to chose which individual gets a loan. So the best bit for me is that Kiva works with local agencies to preselect people who have the skills and attitude required to make the most of their loan, and therefore make the funds to repay it. This has lead to their 100% repayment record.

But how do you know you are going to get the money back? Some of these loans are going to the homes of the most prolific and ingenious internet scammers about. And what about the local partners? If the governments are corrupt, how can you be so sure about them. And then the individuals - how do you know that they are going to use the money for what they say?

The answer is you don't. You have to trust and believe that people are basically good. Microfinance organisations around the world (the World Bank estimates that there are now over 7,000 lending $2.5bn a year) and hundreds of studies have shown that repayment rates are very high when you let local groups set the criteria for lending and select who gets a loan. The largest and most famous microfinance bank, Grameen bank in India (home of Nobel prize winner and father of microlending Prof. Muhammad Yunus) has nearly 6 million borrowers, and has disbursed over $5.4 billion has a steady repayment rate of around 98%.

More info:

• The United Nations Capital Development Fund has a centre for microfinance with lots of background material
  
• Microcredit library from the Global Development Resource Centre - a very ugly and unusable site, but lots of good information.
  

Anyway, I chose to lend to:

• A formidible looking woman called Akou (above) in Togo, who needs capital to expand her food business to support her children after the death of her husband.
• An enthusiastic looking young man called Kokouvi also in Togo, who is going to set up a food shop in order to pay for the education of his little brothers and sisters.

I'll keep you posted with their progress...

Changing electricity providers part III

Signed up with Ecotricity online tonight, pretty straightforward except they can't do DD online (no big deal) and there didn't seem to be an option to choose the all-green option, they sign you up to the part-green option by default. Why? I want to pay more for all green! Surely they want this... I emailed them to correct this, will keep you posted on the set-up.

But - with EDF we got a £40 dual fuel discount for getting gas and electricity. Can you get greener gas? It doesn't look like it. But you can get cheaper gas. USwitch tells us that by switiching our gas to nPower (who we think are not too evil - see posts passim) we will save £40 anyway. Hurrah. nPower it is.

So in summary,

• I've switched my electricity provider to Ecotricity. My supply will be a mix of new green (Ecotricity's wind turbines) and old green (existing wind, solar and tidal sources), with a commitment to continued investment in growing new green resources.
• This will cost approx. £14 more a year and I have lost my £40 dual fuel discount.
• But switching gas to nPower saves me £40 anyway!
• Switching has saved the equivilent of a return flight to New York in CO2 emissions

Changing electricity providers part II

So, then I found Ecotricity, the UK's largest independent green energy company, set up by "Eco Hero" Dale Vince OBE (new-age traveller turned corporate hot-shot) with the express purpose of changing the way that electricity is generated and supplied in order to bring about significant environmental improvement. As a company without shareholders it can make decisions based on what is best for the planet, not on what maximises profit. They spent the most per customer on building deep-green resources (by almost 10x) of any energy provider (more info - this site is authored by Ecotricity so unsurprisingly they come out the best, but the facts do seem to be backed up by the big provider's sites).

Ecotricity has two tariffs:
1. New Energy - 26% energy from "new green" (i.e. Ecotricity's green sources), rest "brown", tariff is matched to that of your regional provider. Proceeds are ploughed into building more new green capacity.
2. New Energy Plus - same committment to building new sources, but ALL your energy is green - the 26% new green is topped up with "old green" (existing wind, solar and tidal). This is scarce so tariff is 0.5p more per unit.

We decided to go with the all-green option. If our electricity usage is the same as last year, this will cost us £16.27 more than the part-green option (which would cost the same as our current supplier EDF).

And they will plant a tree when we switch. And you can climb up their wind turbine in Norfolk - we are already planning a visit!

So where's the catch?

• They are small. nPower's total spend on new green resources was 7x Ecotricity's in 2004 . But they are growing (looks like the spend will be pretty similar this year) and they are totally dedicated.
• How do you know that Dale is going to invest your extra cash in the most efficient way possible? I guess you don't. But there is no premium on the tariff, so it's no difference to you and they are definately building new turbines.
  

More info:

• article in the Ecologist on the subject of changing electricity suppliers which favours Ecotricity, which provided many of the facts in this post
  
• article in The Independent about measuring your "carbon fitness"
  which I used to calculate CO2 emissions
  
• Ecotricity's website
  

Changing electricity providers part I

So, it's been a while... apologies.

I decided to start with electricity. I found out that the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity accounts for 35-40% of the UK's carbon emissions. In 1989, when the energy market was deregulated, approx. 3.5% of the supply was from "deep green" sources (wind, tidal, solar). Today, over 17 years later, that percentage is... wait for it... still 3.5%. Brilliantly, the government's target is for this to be 20% by 2020 (that's 13 year's time). Go, Tony Blair.

Anyway, last year my household used 3,254 units of electricity, the generation of which created 1.3 tonnes of CO2 (the same as a return flight to New York). My current provider is the evil EDF, who last year not only did not contribute to the creation of green energy sources, but were in fact among the top 5 UK CO2 emitters.

I found that most of the electricity providers provide a "green" tariff, which largely seems to involve paying a premium to guarentee that your energy comes from an exisiting green source ("old green"). Of course, this does not actually mean that your house is wired up to a wind turbine, the provider just makes sure that enough green energy goes into the National Grid to cover your usage. Some also provide off-setting (planting trees to counterbalance the CO2 produced in the generation of your electricity).

This didn't strike me as actually doing much to solve the problem in the longer term i.e. making a step-change in the capacity of green energy supplies in the UK. Sure, some of them (most for example nPower) do invest something in new green sources, but it didn't seem to be top of the agenda.

The search goes on...