Ecotricity seem to be the genuine green energy supplier with green tariffs from other companies providing a much smaller amount of renewable energy. And then there’s the total greenwash brigade with companies like E.ON becoming a major player and yet hardly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

It seems counter intuitive, but the more customers who switch to a company such as Good Energy (who aren’t dramataically increasing capacity) means that there is LESS renewable energy in the mix for other consumers.

The only way to improve capacity is to actively build more renewable sources, such as wind farms.This is the reason I switched to Ecotricity a few years ago. It takes investment to build capacity, to the larger energy companies renewables are an expensive distraction, and the smaller green companies the lack of customer base means they can’t actively invest very much. The single-minded approach of Ecotricity means they’re focussed on building more capacity as quickly as they can, increasing their fuel mix towards renewables, and reducing our reliance on non-renewable sources of power.

It’s a dilemma that Ecotricity can drum up business and pull in customers looking for green energy when the truth is that it cannot supply 100% green energy.

In all fairness, their expenditure on renewables is superior to the other big energy players, so for now it’s a question of sitting back, taking and paying for what green energy you can and hoping that the honesty and ethics of the company is such that they do replace the traditional energy they use with renewable energy.

Only time will tell.

In the meantime everybody can do their bit to reduce demand by switching off unused lights, turning off unused computers and electrical equipment, insulating their homes etc.

I have been looking into this recently - isn’t the point about green energy that there currently isn’t enough supply to meet demand?

Energy companies who don’t build new supplies (wind farms etc) but who do 100% green are just using up already limited supplies?

Ecotricity spend more per customer than any other energy company on building new sources of green energy (http://www.whichgreen.org)

I could be wrong though - the market is pretty confusing and drowning in greenwash…