Households pay £1,000 more for ‘green’ energy which is not even renewable
By Paul Homewood
h/t Philip Bratby
Oh dear, how sad, never mind!
Households on "green" energy tariffs are paying nearly £1,000 a year more for their bills, while still receiving electricity generated by fossil fuels.
Amid a cost of living crisis, many customers have switched to green tariffs in an attempt to beat rising gas prices. However, these customers could now be paying hundreds of pounds more than households on traditional deals.
Some renewable suppliers, including Good Energy and Ecotricity, have an exemption from the energy price cap, which limits how much companies can charge customers for their power.
Consumer campaign group Fairer Finance said many customers would be "shocked" to discover they were not protected by the cap and paying considerably more for their energy.
Good Energy’s standard variable tariff costs the average household £2,230 a year. This is 75pc, or £953, more than the current energy price cap. It is also 8pc, or £259, higher than the revised limit which will apply from April. Ecotricity’s default tariff meanwhile would cost the average household £2,179 a year – £902 more than the cap.
Fairer Finance’s James Daley said: "Many consumers would be shocked to know that some renewable energy companies do not need to abide by the price cap, and it can’t be right that customers who choose green options are forced to pay 75pc more than those who choose regular fossil fuel suppliers."
Experts said customers on green tariffs may also be unaware the energy delivered to their home includes electricity generated by fossil fuels. This is because all suppliers pool their energy before it is delivered to homes via the National Grid.
Green suppliers said by using their services, the proportion of renewable energy being delivered to homes would increase over time. Green Energy sources its electricity from 1,900 different renewable generators, while Ecotricity invests profits into building renewable infrastructure.
If renewable energy really is as cheap as they make out, why are these green deal not cheaper than the price cap?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I have asked Octopus, who supply 100% renewable electricity, why their prices go up with wholesale gas prices. Their answer “That’s the way the market works. It would be unfair to pay different suppliers different rates. “
I was recommended to invest in Octopus Energy. Didn’t, recognising the taxpayer subsidy in their business plan. Share price very shaky since.
It might also be because they don’t – and can’t – supply 100% renewable energy. Their 100% renewable only exists on paper.
What’s unfair is that some renewables (those on Renewables Obligations) should continue to get subsidies on top of high market prices. There might have been some excuse when gas prices were low, as renewables could not compete. But none whatever now.
To all those who signed up for green electricity, remember, no good deed goes unpunished.
Self inflicted stupidity especially.
The moral of the story – don’t believe the sales propaganda, especially if the word “green” is involved. Do your own research before signing up to anything.
If renewable energy really is as cheap as they make out, why are these green deal not cheaper than the price cap?
The deals are for electricity and gas, but there’s no ‘green gas’.
That’s not what I smell every time an environmentalist walks past.
Only slightly off-topic but relevant to earlier threads on shale gas, a great letter in today’s DT from Francis Egan, boss of Cuadrilla:
SIR – Jeremy Warner is wrong to say that Cuadrilla’s shale gas exploration wells in Lancashire “produced no burnable quantity of gas at all” (Business, February 16).
Each of our two Lancashire gas exploration wells flowed very high-quality natural gas to surface from just a handful of fractures completed in the underlying shale rock. The limited number of fractures was due to the regulatory requirement to halt operations any time micro-seismicity induced by fracturing exceeded just 0.5 on the Richter scale. A study by Liverpool University has equated the impact of a 0.5 micro-seismic event to sitting down on an office chair.
Just 10 per cent gas recovery from the Bowland shale could supply 50 years of current UK gas demand. To produce the same amount of energy as a single 10-acre shale gas site of 40 wells would require a wind farm some 1,500 times that size or a solar park nearly 1,000 times the size. Shale gas is by far the best option to minimise land use per energy produced.
At current UK gas prices, the value of just 10 per cent of the in-place British resource would be approximately £3.3 trillion. The potential tax take from producing this could be close to £200 billion. Imported gas produces no tax, no jobs and higher carbon-dioxide emissions.
Gas from the existing Cuadrilla wells could and should be flowing to local domestic consumers within 12 months of equipment remobilising to site.
The case for shale gas is strong and fundamentally logical. The Government needs to lift the moratorium urgently.
Francis Egan
Chief Executive Officer, Cuadrilla Resources Limited
Hear, hear!!
Talking of solar panels – anyone seen the Amazon advert with a huge expanse of panels disfiguring the land? So sad. And you can’t help but notice the woman wearing her face nappy outside in the fresh air.
Mr Egan’s letter is, as usual on this topic, a fabrication of truth and obfuscation. Warner was correct to say that neither of Cuadrilla’s wells has produced burnable gas. Nobody has ever raised the issue of the qualty of shale gas as Mr Egan does. To be “burnable” the gas has to flow in sufficient quantiry to reach the gas grid – we all know that methane burns! The Preston tests did not demonstrate viable flows. Futhermore, he leaves the impression that Cuadrilla obeyed the regulation of magnitude 0.5 distturbance and failed because of it. It didn’t. The second test went up to a reported 2.7 (and still the gas wasn’t flowing commercially). When is all this mis-information going to stop so that we can get some sensible judgements on whether to try again at a realistic disturbance level?
I think Mr Egan will have rather better information on what his company’s wells produced than you will.
Vernon, I can’t tell you how much I look forward to reading your letter in the DT disputing Egan’s claims in similar words and accusations you’ve used here.
And I look fwd to you getting some interesting letters from his solicitors.
Vernon, the Hodder Bowland shale yields lots of gas in the Irish and North Seas. Why does the bit between not do the same?
I await your expert* explanation with interest.
JF
*I assume you are a geologist.
Vernon you are wrong. To be burnable the gas simply has to be of a quality that will burn. What you are talking about is commercial supply. Commercial supply was not achieved because of idiot govt regulations stopping the ‘burnable’ gas from being supplied to the Grid. Even by your fake definition the only problem encountered is wet green Govt obstruction.
Come on,
Are we to believe that any politician would listen to a logical argument? Perhaps if Mr Egan wished to make any impact he should try the tried and tested brown envelope method.
Harry, I hope you are posting that far and wide. Why are our politicians so breathtakingly stupid? They can’t all be privately educated Oxford PPEs.
JF
This is where ‘planet saving’ and ‘virtue-signalling’ start costing the imbecilic ‘WOKE’ type ‘warmist’ idiots some REAL money for nothing! There will always be people, companies, organisations, even national utilities providers who just can’t help themselves, they ALL just have to milk the ‘warmist’ SAPS!
What many people don’t realise, is that there’s no possibility to separate “green” and “non green” electricity in the grid, what so ever. The grid is not constructed that way. It is also not possible to tag the electrons. Simply put, you get the electricity from the closest source, regardless of type. The suppliers knows this very well. Some of the politicians too, but chooses to keep quiet and maintain the scam.
Laws vary between countries, but I suspect that in most countries, it is illegal to sell products and services based on lies. Why shouldn’t it apply in this case? That include to claim something being “green”, when not (like wind power) If you live close to a coal power plant and pay for “green” electricity, you are being scammed, because it is not what you get.
That is a rather simplistic analysis of the National Grid.
I would hate to be accused of stealing other people’s money, just because the £20 notes I extract from a cash machine aren’t the same notes given to me by my employer, (or the same notes given to my employer by its customers).
The problem lies in a green version of quantitative easing, where the Methane changes colour, dependent on extraneous events.
As long as you pay for what is put in elsewhere, the system works. We are paying for Energy, not moving electrons and, in fact, it isn’t the moving electrons that transfer the energy:
An instructive video, thanks for sharing.
Close, but no cigar. I was commenting on how it is presented. That’s my point. If you buy something specifically and you get something else, logically, that’s a problem. Money don’t have that issue. (As you probably know, the money system is something that simplifies trading, removing the need of exchanging goods/services with other goods/services, even though it is occasionally still used today. Different story.) I would suspect that if you buy a car and pay for a Rolls Royce Phantom, but instead receive a Trabant (for the same amount of money), you would complain, wouldn’t you? Using your argumentation, it shouldn’t matter what you get, because both are cars …
Where I live (in Sweden), we pay for electricity. Up to some few years ago, we even payed for “consumed” electricity, but the suppliers was forced to change this to “transfered”, due to laws of physics.
No you are wrong and SasjaL is right. Your analogy with cash transfer is an incorrect one and your example that energy doesn’t flow in wires, though correct, is a non sequitur.
To first order, power flows obey Kirchoff’s laws for DC circuits. Deviations of power factors from 1 mean that there are in fact some other flows that take place, and harmonics and other oscillations can interfere with the simple analysis. Power factors also affect the efficiency of transmission, since out of phase current and voltage (and equivalently out of phase magnetic and electric fields) lead to local power dissipation rather than transmission.
National Grid actually have a simplified grid model that looks at the power factors/phase angles and reactance as well as resistive flows and produces estimates of the share of sources regionally (click on the map) and shows the inter regional flows.
https://www.carbonintensity.org.uk/#regional
Its biggest weakness is that it fails to account properly for the sources at the other ends of interconnectors, particularly the BritNed, which is basically a link to the coal fired power stations at Maasvlakte any time they are operating.
On a more local level you could consider the SW, where generation is dominated by Indian Queens CCGT in Cornwall and Hinkley Point B in Somerset, with a good sprinkling of solar farms. If you live in Penzance your power will be from IQ plus local solar in daylight hours, at least when it is running. If you live in Bridgewater your power will be nuclear, plus some solar in daylight. Somewhere between the power sources will mix.
This is the same as the people with Solar panels who are convinced they ‘sell’ their electricity back to the grid on sunny days for the benefit of Mankind. Where do they think this electicity goes, to the house next door?
I too am currently receiving only waffle from Octopus Energy( who otherwise I have to say are normally prompt and helpful about replying to messages on specifics) plus their usual “economy with the truth” about “supplying 100% renewable electricity.” They are so far remaining silent in reply to a very simple question : if I don’t sign up to any particular tariff package when my current fixed price contract for both gas and electricity expires (shortly,) am I correct in my interpretation of OfGem’s website in understanding that my new UNIT PRICES for both gas and electricity will be protected by the (changing) OfGem cap even if my total cost will not have any protection ? Any comments/advice welcome.
The risks of Green Electricity is reported here today where EV cars on a ship with batteries on fire cannot be extinguished. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/experts-needed-put-electric-batteries-231540158.html?.tsrc=fp_deeplink I wrote to my MP last year when I heard Grant Shapps saying, in the House of Commons, that he was not aware of the difficulty of extinguishing electric vehicle battery fires, which amazed me. Shapps was replying to a question about possible Electric Bus battery fires, and the risks to the Public in a rescue. I received a reply from the Ministry of Transport sayiing that “all Fire Services are fully trained for current risks”. Not what a recently retired Fire Officer stated to me!
I worked for the last eight years for a company that made Li Ion batteries. We had a cell fire in the rear of the factory. I can assure you all and Grant Shapps that the Fire Brigade could’nt put it out.
What do you expect from the Johnson Government, they are all liars.
Come, come Keith, some are easily gullible and others merely stupid.
https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2022/37269/mol-car-carrier-fire-abandoned-atlantic/
Fascinating account, John. And we worried about gas and H2 leaks/explosions….
I wonder how long it will be before electric cars will not be allowed on the Chunnel, in multi-story carparks, or in residential garages…. Of course,, the government daren’t legislate for this as it would be seen as a huge weakness in their NZC strategy.
Another story
https://www.fleetmon.com/maritime-news/2022/37305/bulgarian-bulk-carrier-and-maersk-tanker-pushed-wi/
Wind farms at risk of collisions. Lucky escape this time.
Hydrofluoric acid aerosol is another danger of these fires.
JF
It is good that some of you folks in the UK understand the sourcing and pricing of electricity.
It seems to me to be akin to a “Heath Robinson contraption”.
Oh no, John, Heath-Robinson could make you smile! 🙂
Oh dear oh dear, pay more for your “green” fuel and no one knows about it!! What’s the point of that? Don’t the companies provide stickers one can proudly place on one’s car or house to show how much more caring one is than those nasty deniers?
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Channel 5 just broadcast a comment about the big freeze of 1963 (which I remember) with the words “Climate Chancge Armagedon”.
Doh!
My energy supplier is Scottish Power and they tell me that I am receiving 100% green energy. I have always wondered how on earth they can do that as I don’t have some sort of separate cabling arrangement. Anyway, as energy from gas and coal is much cheaper I wonder if I should write and ask for non-green energy at a reduction in price?
Depends which part of Scotland you are in and how windy it is. In the North, the power sources tend to be dominated by wind and hydro when it’s windy, and you may genuinely receive 100% renewables power at times, with the area exporting power Southwards. When the winds drop the CCGT plant at Peterhead comes into play, along with imports from the South of Scotland, which will be dominated by nuclear from Hunterston (recently closed) and Torness when they are running, but with a good chunk of imports from Northern England and via the Western Link HVDC. Northern England is also fairly well off for nuclear, and imports Norwegian hydro into its mix, but already in low wind conditions there will be much more gas in place of wind and even some coal being fed into exports North. There may be additional local diesel backup in remoter locations.
The closure of Hunterston will increase the frequency of imports from England which will tend to come from the Mersey area via Western Link. Overall Scotland is one of the lower carbon areas of the country, but the nuclear closures (Torness is on charmed life) will result in less green supply in future.