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Nobody else seems to have explained what happened here so I guess I'll attempt to do so. As you probably noticed, although you have a "100% renewable energy" tariff, the company who sold you this tariff did not lay new cables to your home to supply this energy. Indeed, they don't lay any cables, anywhere, they're just a paper company, they have an office maybe, a call centre, maybe a few web servers in the cloud. Clearly they do not make "100% renewable energy" and they couldn't deliver it to you if they did. Instead your home is hooked up to exactly the same electricity as everybody else in your area, by a specialist supplier who deliver electricity to everybody (well, all ordinary residential customers and most small businesses, the situation for an industrial Aluminium Smelter or whatever isn't the same) but don't have you (or any of your neighbours) as direct customers. This is good news - when it's dead calm and dark, but freezing cold, your electricity still works because it's the same electricity as your neighbours. So what were you buying for one penny per kWh extra? In the UK when a wind farm makes electricity they get an imaginary coupon for the fact that this is "green" renewable energy called a Renewable Energy Guarantee of Origin or REGO, they can snip this coupon off the electricity and sell these two things separately. The electricity is valuable (in another response elsewhere I might cover why it might be more valuable for them but it's irrelevant to you) and so obviously they should sell that for the prevailing market price or better if they can. But the REGO eh, not so much. But they can sell it, even if for not very much, and so they do. You are paying one penny per kWh for a promise that your supplier will buy enough REGOs to add up to the amount of electricity you used. That probably cost them much less than a tenth of a penny per kWh. So, really you just gave them free money. In theory if most electricity users in the UK cared, and bought these "100% renewable" tariffs, the REGOs could go up in value and you'd make a real difference and it would all be worthwhile. In reality very few UK consumers even bother to pick a cheaper electricity tariff, let alone seeking a "renewable" tariff. So, next time your tariff renewal comes up, ignore whether it's "renewable" that's not better or worse, just focus on price. Wanting to do good is an excellent motive, but this is the wrong place to attempt that. |