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Ecotricity
Article updated: Wednesday 2 February, 2011
Ecotricity is the only green energy company building its own new renewable energy sources.
Ecotricity is a green energy company that invests a lot of money in building new renewable energy generators.
It offers customers the chance to have a significant impact on the future of renewable energy, as it is building green electricity and gas ‘mills’.
It also promises “green for the price of brown” energy on its New Energy Tariff, which allows customers to get green electricity for the same price as standard “brown” energy.
Green electricity tariffs
Ecotricity offers three different tariffs:
- New energy – The electricity supplied in this tariff has a portion of green energy from Ecotricity’s own wind turbines (currently 41%), and is topped up with ‘brown’ electricity bought on the energy market.
- New energy plus – This electricity tariff consists of the same proportion of green energy from Ecotricity’s wind turbines, but is topped up with green electricity bought on the energy market. That makes this tariff 100% renewable. But because green energy is more expensive, the tariff comes at a premium of 0.5p per unit. This works out at about £20 extra a year for a typical household.
- Green gas – Ecotricity also supply gas to its existing electricity customers. This is currently from ‘brown’ sources but Ecotricity are planning to build green gasmills and supply only renewable gas in the future.
Price promise
Ecotricity promises to match the “big six” energy suppliers on their standard “brown” electricity price with its New Energy tariff and will match British Gas’ standard prices with the Green Gas tariff. This means, if you are on a standard tariff, it won’t cost you any more to switch to green electricity and gas with Ecotricity and you can get “green for the price of brown”.
However, if you have already switched to a cheap online or discounted tariff, switching to Ecotricity is likely to cost a little more compared to your current bills.
Investing in new energy
Ecotricity prides itself on investing in building new sources of green electricity. It says that only by building new sources of renewable energy can we reduce CO2 emissions and our dependence on fossil fuels.
Ecotricity spends more on this per customer than all the other electricity suppliers in the UK put together. It consistently spends more than a typical energy bill, every year, for each of its customers building new green energy sources.
Over the last six years Ecotricity has spent an average of £387.93 a year building new turbines for green energy – for each and every one of its customers. Its closest rival, Scottish Power (www.scottishpower.co.uk), spent less than £30 per customer per year over the same period.
In comparison, Npower (www.npower.com) spent £16.50, EDF (www.edfenergy.com) spent £4.98 and E.ON (www.eonenergy.com) spent just £4.48 per customer.
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