We love green energy

The easiest thing you can do for climate change? Switch energy supplier.

This Saturday I will be in the market square outside the Guildhall - wearing my thickest soled boots - encouraging you to switch to a green electricity supplier. We are doing this with other volunteers from the Cambridge Climate Alliance. I have been buying green electricity pretty much since I got involved with Transition Cambridge. It seemed to me to be the right thing to do. Let me explain.

We as consumers have power. When we exercise our choices not to buy the cheapest thing but the best thing, we expand the market and make those best things more available. Free range eggs, fair trade bananas, organic food in general – these are more and more available because we choose to buy them even when they aren’t the cheapest.

Green energy is better than fossil fuels. My electricity supplier uses mainly wind power and solar, but also energy from waste and water power. Green energy is extremely low in carbon emissions – even compared with fossil power stations fitted with carbon capture and storage which is supposed to be low carbon (see table). Since a quarter of our energy related carbon emissions come from generatlng electricity, switching to 100% green electricity would make a huge difference.

Technology	Carbon emissions gCO2/kWh
Current average electricity supply	462
Coal with CCS (integrated gasifier combined cycle)	175
Gas with CCS (combined cycle)	73
Solar PV panels (polycrystalline Si)	54
Onshore wind	8
Offshore wind	6

Data from Current and Future Lifecycle emissions of key 'low carbon' technologies and alternatives (for CCC) except current average supply from DEFRA carbon factors


Green energy is better in other respects too. It means investment and jobs in the UK. It doesn’t rely on complicated supply lines through unstable political regimes. Most green electricity is also clean electricity too - there are no pollutants emitted from working solar panels or wind turbines. Wind has a bad press for being dangerous to birds and bats but even the RSPB is now building its own wind turbine (see Why is the RSPB erecting a wind turbine?).

Like a lot of other ‘best’ things, 100% green electricity costs a little bit more. A few days ago I did a cost comparison of the best Big Six deal I could find with the best green supplier. For a medium electricity using household the extra cost is just 20p/day – approximately the cost of one fair trade organic banana from Tesco.

Of course if you haven’t compared tariffs recently you probably aren’t on the best tariff anyway – switching to green electricity may not cost you any more than you are paying already.

When I switched to green energy it was arguably unnecessary because the government required electricity companies to supply an increasing proportion of power from renewables. It worked pretty well – in 2014 the actual proportion was 19%, compared to less than 4% a decade before. However, the government is closing down that scheme and the new policy, contracts for difference is purely budget driven with no targets. So if I hadn’t already switched I would certainly switch now, because we need to tell the electricity supply companies that we aren’t only interested in price – we want our electricity to be clean and safe for the planet too. After all, climate change is expensive - cleaning up after storms and floods and coping with droughts costs a lot of money.

We often hear that renewables are now cheaper than fossil fuels anyway – so why does it cost more at all? The simplest answer is that although renewables can be cheaper in the long term they have a high investment cost up front – and investors don’t like to wait twenty years for payback time. So the costs are higher in the short term to pay for that investment. Also we have a lot of infrastructure already invested in fossil fuels and it is cheaper to keep that going than pay for new clean infrastructure.

Living a low carbon lifestyle can be difficult because often the easy choices are not the low carbon choices. When it’s raining it’s easier to get in the car than on the bike. It’s easier to buy a ready made meal of unknown origins than to make something from scratch. But switching to a green energy supplier is about the easiest thing you can do. You just choose one, tell them what you want, and wait for it happen.


There are three main green energy suppliers:

• Ovo energy www.ovoenergy.com
• Ecotricity www.ecotricity.co.uk
• Good Energy www.goodenergy.co.uk

All are small as yet but they are growing fast. Ovo Energy tripled in size in one year and now has 500,000 customers. So you won’t be on your own. If you love green energy - why not switch?

See also our information sheet ‘We Love Green Energy’ which I will be handing out on Saturday.

Cambridge City Council consults with environmental groups on Climate Change

Bev Sedley, Kati Preston and James Smith at the Climate Change Strategy Workshop

I am always impressed when I have dealings with Cambridge City Council officers on climate change issues because they care just as much as we do and are always keen to work with us where we can. Right now the council is in the closing stages of the five yearly review of their climate change strategy and I was delighted when David Kidston (Strategy and Partnerships manager) picked up our idea for a workshop to discuss the plan and ran with it. The date was set for 2nd Feb and in the end there were about 30 people there room a whole range of environmental groups in Cambridge including 38 degrees, Pivotal, Cambridge Past Present and Future,  Cambridge Carbon Footprint and of course Transition Cambridge.  Fortunately the Guildhall has some good sized rooms.

It was a bit of a rush, trying to review the whole strategy in 90 minutes but we did a valiant job. David asked for our comments and ideas on each of the 5 objectives and there were council experts to answer questions and explain. So, for example, the reason why the strategy calls for electric taxis but not electric buses is because there are no electric double decker electric buses on the market yet - and single decker buses can’t handle enough people. Emma Davies said she was delighted that we supported their idea to use planning rules to promote energy saving measures as consequential improvements. (So for example, if someone has plans for a home extension they would be required to take measures to reduce energy use in the rest of the house at the same time, where feasible). But mainly the council wanted to hear our new ideas, of which there were plenty. Suggestions included the council buying electricity from a green energy supplier, adjusting the park and ride bus services to improve uptake in those services, running an Open Eco Office event along the lines of CCF’s Open Eco Homes, and many more.

In fact the council has already achieved significant carbon savings from previous projects such as switching to LED lighting (Corn Exchange and some car parks), upgrading heating and cooling equipment (various swimming pools and leisure centres and offices) and even a heat recovery system at the crematorium. However, most of us didn’t know about this and there was a general feeling that communicating these successes to more people would change perceptions and raise aspirations across the city.

Also there will soon be a ‘Cambridge Sustainable Housing Guide’ that will set higher standards for sustainability and energy efficiency than current building regulations. Unfortunately this will only apply to new social housing sites and developments owned by the council because the council is not allowed to apply it more widely.

We covered a lot in a very short space of time, and David Kidston said that all of our captured comments would be included in their report to councillors.

Home insulation targets in sight

It has been a very long and eventful journey from April 2014 when the Cambridge Green Communities fund was first announced but the target 1000 'hard to treat' homes to be insulated is now in sight. The deadline for registering is the end of March so if you are still thinking about it you need to do so quickly. More than 950 homes have already signed up and nearly half of those completed.

I heard the latest news yesterday from Justin Smith, home energy officer at Cambridge City Council. We were both at a workshop discussing the Cambridge City Council Climate Change Strategy (consultation now closed). The strategy is for the whole city, not just managing the council's own carbon footprint, and the Green Deal Communities funding has been a significant plank in the actions for objective 2 'Reducing energy consumption and emissions from homes and businesses in Cambridge and tackling fuel poverty, ...'.

Homes are classified as 'hard to treat' because they are unsuitable for cavity wall insulation, typically because they don't have cavity walls. Cambridge and the surrounding areas have an awful lot of homes with solid walls and also homes with 'system build' constructions that don't have fillable cavities. Insulating them makes a big difference: improving the comfort of the residents, and reducing energy use and carbon emissions. There are also grants for a variety of energy saving measures for houses in the private rented sector. The total funding provided was  £7.8 million.

The TC energy group have done our best to support this project from the start. Soon after the launch we ran a forum on Thermal Comfort in Older Houses and put links on our advice pages to encourage people to sign up. Also there have been several events run by Cambridge Carbon Footprint. At each one there were experts to answer questions on solid wall insulation issues and Justin Smith explained the funding on offer. However, in the initial stages it was slow going. It was a learning experience both for the council team and for their Action on Energy delivery partner, Climate Energy. To be fair, Climate Energy were very experienced working with social housing but for private home owners the requirements are a bit different.

One problem was that Climate Energy were rather limited in their expertise. They could supply external wall insulation but if you wanted anything else done at the same time - such as insulating a flat roof or doing maintenance on the eaves, then that was difficult if not impossible to arrange. In the beginning, when Climate Energy was the only approved installer these limitations were a serious problem but gradually other local installers have won approval and now there are nine with a wide range of expertise including other types of insulation and windows as well as wall insulation.

Then in October last year Climate Energy went into administration causing consternation for Justin and the council team - and hundreds of home owners who had already contracted with Climate Energy and paid their deposits but not yet had the work done. Fortunately Climate Energy had subcontracted installations to other firms such as Thrift Energy and they have been very flexible about taking over the individual household contracts - sometimes even honouring the deposits already paid if they could not be recovered.

The deadlines for completing the installations is still tight and there is very little money left now (so if you want to take advantage of the £4000/home grant still available you had better get to it right away). The whole project has been a nightmare to administer and Justin definitely has a few more gray hairs than before. However the benefits will be felt for many years. The residents of the homes that have been insulated will appreciate the extra warmth and lower bills - and the installers who have been involved in delivering those schemes have gained experience in delivering insulation to difficult homes. These skills will be invaluable in the future as there are a lot more houses to retrofit as we transition to a low carbon economy in 2050.