The Great REGO Con
By Paul Homewood
One of our readers, Knut Aabakken, who lives in Essex sent me this email:
Hi Paul
I registered my interest for the Big Community Switch and got an offer where they claimed that the electricity was 100% renewable.
“The auction was won by So Energy and the tariff comes with 100% renewable electricity.”
I questioned this and got the following response:
“Thank you for contacting us. I appreciate your query about So Energy offering 100% renewable energy. Through the Big Community Switch all participating supplier in the auction must bid with 100% renewable energy plan.
Electricity generated from all sources is sent to the grid together. This means that all grid users are serviced by a mix of electricity, including renewable energy. When you choose a 100% renewable plan, the supplier has made a commitment to supplement the grid with enough renewable energy to cover your consumption. However, your home will still be serviced by the mix.
So Energy are the only supplier of renewable electricity that gives customers the chance to vote on how they source it. Hydro, Solar, Wind or Biomass: you can cast your vote and they will use the results to source next year’s energy for your home. You can find out more here.
Personal Offers are being sent out at the moment. You have until July 31st to accept your offer.
I trust to have provided you with enough information. Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance and I will be very happy to help.
If you have any additional questions, please also feel free to take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions.
Kind Regards,
Erna”
As far as I can see, this is pretty close to fraud. Asking for suppliers to only offer 100% renewable electricity is pretty stupid and by the way, the offer is for dual supply, electricity and gas. Where to they get the “renewable” gas from?
Knut
..
We have of course been down this road before. At least they admit that the electricity which comes into your house comes from exactly the same sources as your neighbour’s!
But what guarantee is there that your supplier has made a commitment to supplement the grid with enough renewable energy to cover your consumption?
This is what SO Energy say:
REGOs!
However these offer no such guarantee at all, as the switching site, Simply Switch explain:
https://www.simplyswitch.com/energy/guides/renewable-energy-guarantees-origin-rego-scheme-explained/
In short, REGOs are simply bits of meaningless paper.
Renewable generators often are not required to supply REGOs to their customers, which in many cases are their parent or sister companies, as they may have no need for them. So the renewable generators simply cash in by flogging them to the likes of SO Energy.
Still, at least it makes the green virtue signallers who fall for this con feel better!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
I suppose a few Gruaniad readers will buy into it to help offset their avocado and ‘fairtrade’ coffee fetish.
“As far as I can see, this is pretty close to fraud.”
Pretty close? Let me edit it for you: “This is fraud”.
“When you choose a 100% renewable plan, the supplier has made a commitment to supplement the grid with enough renewable energy to cover your consumption.”
But what if there isn’t “enough renewable energy to cover” the consumption of all signatories to the “100% renewable plan”? Is their power supply reduced or even cut off?
It’s like the banking system, which collapses if everyone tries to take their cash out at once.
This sounds like it could be used to make an interesting board game. Something along the lines of Monopoly. What we need is a snappy title and some cards, like the Community Chest and Chance.
Tesla makes most of its profits from selling the green certificates it gets for each car to airlines/fossil power stations that claim to be green.
You also get them for planting trees, rewilding , removing drainage from peat bogs so they get wet.
Most of these projects are overseas in difficult to access areas, such as Indonesia, Amazonia.
The firms running the scam have been known to sell the same certificate a number of times to different companies.
The whole scheme is just fraud, but it seems to satisfy a need to be green for the recipients, so they just pay up rather than rock the boat.
GeoffB , the same thing in the UK is called the ETS . It is a clever way that the ridiculous subsidies to unreliable energy are hidden , and the main reason that energy prices , fuel costs and everything else have gone up and caused the ” Cost of living crises “.
The last time I looked , Tesla lost about $700 million a year on the car business , but turned it into a $700 million profit after they were given and sold on the Carbon Credits .
Which does put into perspective how the whole Green fraud scheme is using peoples money .
Tesla has to be – bar Chinese companies possibly – the only battery car only maker to survive in business. It is a virtue-signalling brand which brought in a lot of customers at the start but not enough to keep it in profit were it not for the Carbon Credits.
I have had precisely the same experience as Knut.
Over several emails to Community Switch (CS) – a business owned by Dutch nationals NOT resident in the UK if memory serves me – I was able to screw the following admission out of them – eventually:
My last email to CS:
“Thanks for your email; the simple solution would be for you to ask Soenergy if any or all of their energy suppliers trade in REGOs – they either do or do not.
With respect, to say you don’t know because “we do not have access to that information” is incorrect. REGOs are a well known device used by energy supplier businesses – if they are bought direct that is one issue; if they are traded then that is tantamount to “greenwashing” and I am sure you will be familiar with that term.
And lastly , any energy supplier in the UK , be they wholesale or direct supplier to households, that states they use 100% renewable energy is being disingenuous in the extreme- all renewable energy requires back up spinning capacity for when the grid demand is not matched by their supply; the back up is currently, and will be for a long time, provided by a combination of fossil fuels – gas/coal – biomass and nuclear energy. I expect you are aware of that too.”
Response:
“Dear MrXXXXX,
Thank you for your response.
Unfortunately, my only task is to deal with customer service and it is what they pay me for, therefore I cannot do research about this kind of information while I am at work, hence I am unable to answer to it, for which I apologise.
Regarding the trading of these REGOs. I study Economics and recently, I had a case study about the trading of emission rights, therefore I am familiar with the situation. All of these big companies are really aggressive and are profit-driven, therefore they will do everything to have the lowest marginal cost possible. In this case, they can achieve it by purchasing/trading emission rights. However, as every firm, they just want to make money, which is why I think it is the government’s responsibility to regulate these companies. On the other hand, governments are making more money with the current regulations compared to having more stricter ones, with fewer emission rights on the market. However, as I said, compared to them we are just a small customer service firm with very limited information, which is why I cannot give you an exact answer about how they get their emission rights.
I completely agree with your argument, however, as I said, they provide us with that information, which is also highlighted on their website. Since we are not in the possession of their figures and data we are unable to question them about it. As well as our job is not to go against but to work with the suppliers.
I believe, that the information and arguments I have provided you will not satisfy your needs, however, we are just a middleman company. We are not connected to the suppliers in any way other than completing the auction and the switchover. Therefore, to acquire the answers you are looking for, you will have to contact the suppliers, however, it might be difficult to get these informations out of them.”
This was from the CS campaign in November 2020; the current CS for my area has just concluded and I participated to see if matters had changed – they had not. SOEnergy “won” the contract again……and data I have accessed suggests that they are not competitive ( and they definitely are not so vs Octopus, current supplier with whom I have ongoing issues regarding (non) notification of “Tracker” tariff and OFGEM regular checks…..).
Coincidence or very obvious attempt to push the ecogreen lunacy on those not willing to be sceptical…I know what I think..
Shell Energy makes the same claims regarding its supply and even has a datasheet on UK generation which shows how it can’t possibly be delivering 100% renewable energy to me. But then as everyone is selling the same lie it makes no difference unless there is a supplier that is charging you more to virtue-signal. There used to be but I don’t think there is now.
Good Energy used to be quite rigorous about trying to avoid greenwashing. Not sure if that applies since they sold out to Dale Vince. A large dose of biomass and similar does help to provide nominal baseload when the wind stills and the sun isn’t shining. But that tactic is only available to minnow sized companies – which Good Energy was of course. Premium pricing was part of the deal.
Help me out here, as I am confused about Bio Mass. This is still an hydrocarbon, correct? And the little chemistry I remember tells me, anytime you burn an hydrocarbon–any HC, you get water and CO2 as a byproduct of combustion. Why is burning fancy yard waste preferable to dinosaurs? Is it because one is “renewable” and the other allegedly finite? The shale gas and oil developed over the preceding decade should last us well into the foreseeable future, and give us time to develop the Magic Unicorns necessary for wind and solar.
SSE make the same claim about about supplying 100% renewable energy backed by REGOs while at the same time providing a breakdown of their electricity sources. Their latest breakdown is 70.1% natural gas and 29.9% renewables, they don’t buy any nuclear. Their CO2 emissions are claimed to be 261g/kWh compared to a national average of 198g/kWh. I assume the 100% renewable claim is perfectly legal as they buy REGOs. I know I’m being ripped off by this but assume all other suppliers are doing the same thing. I have thought about emailing them and asking them to only supply me with electricity from the cheapest source and adjust my bill accordingly but know they won’t do this so can’t be bothered.
SSE’s REGO purchases for 2022-23 were
277 Biogas
1,388 Biomass
2,711,292 Hydro
104,960 Landfill Gas
294,888 Off-shore Wind
197 Photovoltaic
3,627,301 Wind
6,740,303 Total
The hydro and onshore wind give them a Scottish bias.
IDAU:
“Good Energy used to be quite rigorous about trying to avoid greenwashing. Not sure if that applies since they sold out to Dale Vince.”
The same Dale Vince who yesterday got a puff piece in the Grauniad?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/17/green-energy-tycoon-to-launch-uk-first-electric-airline
Here’s some hard data on So Energy’s sources of REGOs taken from the OFGEM database, covering April 2022-March 2023.
By technology:
150,000 Biodegradable
20,581 Biogas
381,966 Biomass
25,000 Hydro
325,406 Off-shore Wind
65,880 Photovoltaic
316,423 Wind
1,285,256 Total Result
1.285TWh makes them a rather small supplier – not even 2 days’ worth of national consumption over the year
25 largest sources:
275000 Drax Power Station (REGO)
106966 Tilbury Green Power
100658 East Anglia One Offshore Wind
100000 Beddington ERF
100000 Galloper Wind Farm
76726 Fullabrook Wind Farm
74343 A’Chruach Wind Farm Limited
61220 Mynydd y Betws Wind Farm
50000 Copyhold Works (Lakeside)
34232 Aberdeen Offshore Windfarm – Demonstration
32365 Kilgallioch
25000 Glendoe Hydro Power Station
22596 Sisters Wind Farm – GP
18838 Dersalloch
16396 Gwynt y Mor
16014 Greater Gabbard
13354 Soundmark Wind Limited
13314 Ormonde Wind Farm
12775 Hornsea 1 – Phase 2
11231 Beatrice Offshore Wind Farm
8994 Harestanes Windfarm
8883 Wymeswold Solar Farm
7432 Race Bank
6926 Granville AD
20 smallest sources
21 ALG Biogas Wind
21 MCG Power
20 Cloughmills Two
20 StewartstownWind
19 Barnes Farm
19 Battletown Wind
19 Eagleson Farm
17 Currie Northwind
17 Maggie 7
16 Dunaird Energy 150
16 Minerstown Farm
16 Pilkington PV
15 Cavan Hill 150
13 Feglish 150
12 CKZ
12 Drumneath
7 Tullyhubbert
6 Beckton Thames Gate Water Treatment Works.
5 Brockabuoy
2 Jubilee Academy
I note they are sweeping up small generators in NI.
I have already written to Norwich City Council’s Community Switch Team saying the same thing — more or less – that So Energy’s claim was absurd and the Switch Team should not condone or repeat it.
To ram home the point I enclosed a print out from the situation shown by Gridwatch on 11th May at 10:40 GMT showing that renewables were providing 21% to the grid of which 1% was attributed to wind.
The whole case made for renewables relies on an incompetent audience and a masterclass in snake oil salesmanship.
REGO certificate offsets are little more than sophistry.
Knut,
Ask them to give you the option to source from carbon free nuclear power and then watch the sparks fly 😉
Philip, virtue signallers are not open to debate but we could try when the annual switch approaches. Norwich City Council adopted a nuclear free zone policy years ago so I am not hopeful.
“a nuclear free zone”
Thomas,
Given that all matter is made from nuclear atoms, I’d like to see them try. 😉
It was a long time ago circa Aldermarston marches era. Now its gender issues and fully supportive of the SNP policies as far as I can see.
That’s lucky for you Mr Carr, so that when Dementia Joe leads us into a nuclear war with Russia, Norwich will be safe from the fallout.
I’m all for local greenery like ADBLU for my diesel Citroen but any ideas of ‘tackling climate change’ by controlling CO2 is so laughable that protagonists must be deranged. Give me a shout when there’s the slightest tweak on the Keeling Curve.
If you have 100% renewable energy you get none on cloudy still winter days because there is none to get.
‘In short, REGOs are simply bits of meaningless paper.’
Oh, no! You also get a nice sign you can put up in your yard to show that you are better than your neighbors.
I attempted to explain the Electrical Grid to my young nephew using the analogy of a water trough supplied by several pumps, being drank from by several horses. No horse knows which pump supplied his water, and did not care–as long as he had water. No utility can honestly say where they source the electrons they sell you, and would be lying if they did. Only the most credulous of greens would fall for this obvious virtue signalling con, but as WC Fields once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The problem comes when the green-con utilities can no longer supply energy on a calm, windless night.
Ah, but REGOs are no longer cheap bits of electronic paper. In the UK they have been selling for as much as £10/MWh in recent auctions since the UK stopped recognising GOs from the EU. They are becoming a significant backdoor subsidy for renewables.
Click to access e-REGO_Track_Record.pdf
Even in the EU they are getting rather more expensive. €7/MWh in the most recent auction.
https://www.epexspot.com/en/market-data?market_area=&trading_date=2023-06-28&delivery_date=&underlying_year=&modality=Mgo&sub_modality=&technology=&product=&data_mode=graph&period=&production_period=Jan.+23+-+Apr.+23
A number of years ago I read a heated discussion in a HiFi comic about whether using electricity from a Green supplier could improve the quality of the sound from your system.
Remarkable!
I wonder how much energy (green or otherwise) they wasted having the discussion?
How about this – £46 for a FUSE?
https://www.analogueseduction.net/fuses/HFT-SUPF%5B1%5D.html
Read the reviews!
Those reviews! This must be something akin to the placebo effect, surely any difference in sound quality would be minuscule? Ah well, I’m definitely in the wrong business.
Funny stuff, Thank you. I read the goofy reviews. I could maybe, possibly, kinda sorta, go along with the idea if the fuse was inserted in the signal path (but why) or to protect the speakers. Maybe…. But the knuckle head bragging about putting this in the POWER SUPPLY and improving the sound of all his components down stream is beyond my imagination. As the old saying goes, “There’s one born every minute.”
Only if you use the $500 magic unicorn capacitors in your power supply–they be smoooothe.
Posted before but….Dale Vinces’ EcoTricity advertise ‘100% green electricity to your home’. This is similar to the ‘100% Pure Fresh Spring Water to your home’ deal I get from my water supplier, ‘Con A Mug’. Yes, they pour a couple of thousand gallons of 100% pure fresh spring water into a reservoir up north and I get 100% pure fresh spring water out of my tap in Essex!!
It’s more expensive, but I am proud to be doing my bit for the planet.
Have you seen the “Pen and Teller” episode where they set up in a tre-trendy bistro in LA, and have the patrons “taste test” their various offerings of fancy water? They were filling the bottles from the taps in the kitchen. Nevertheless the comments and discernment from the taste tester were many, varied and hilarious. On a related note, I spent some time in NYC and found the best coffee I had ever tasted. And I mean from the finest restaurant to the guy with the push cart in Central Park. My conlusion was–it’s the water. NYC water was the common element to all the sources of coffee I tasted.
I will applaud ‘100% renewable energy’ suppliers if and when they cut off their customers when it’s dark and there is no wind. Only then can they be deemed honest!!
Be careful what you wish for, and do not give our psychopathic overlords any new ideas.
I suspect that this is the real reason behind the push to fit smart meters – it’ll be called “demand management” and is a modern version of rolling blackouts.
Yep.
No comments allowed on this Daily Telegraph article.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/16/labour-build-3000-wind-turbines-meet-starmer-targets-zero/
Seems to me there is some confusion between generation and capacity and once corrected the number of windmills required is substantially increased.
Design spec capacity vs reality, who’s counting? Hey, we’re trying to get rich here under the guise of saving the planet. Thee thousand, ten ten thousand turbines; before you know it you’re talking real money. Move along, nothing to see here.