Greener ways to get our gas & electricity

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Last updated 11/08/10

Going Green

 

Without going to the expensive of installing a wind turbine or solar panels (Photovoltaic panels to give them their proper name) and generating our own electricity, the quickest way to become greener is to switch to a renewable energy supplier.

 

Switching doesn't make any difference to the electricity coming into your house.  It doesn't mean that when its not windy your TV wont work and it doesn't mean that your lights smell funny when you switch them on.

 

Instead what happens is that for every unit of electricity you use your supplier promises to match it with one that has been generated from a renewable source.  This allows you to claim that the CO2 you generated whilst using electricity is zero.

 

Go Green Electricity

 

There are a number of suppliers in the UK ranging from ones only offering green tariffs to the more traditional suppliers offering a green option amongst their other products.  All of them have one thing in common, a green electricity supply costs more per unit than one supplied on a normal tariff.

 

We choose to go with EONs "Go Green Electricity" which provides electricity from both hydro and wind power. 

 

Go Green Gas

 

Another reason for picking this tariff was the it also completely off-sets the CO2 generated by our gas usage at the same time by working with Climate Care. 

 

Climate Care offers a service that helps individuals and organisations to offset the damage their activities do to the climate.

 

While on this tariff we will be investing in efficient stoves in Honduras, human powered water pumps in India and renewable power for schools in India.

 

Efficient stove in Honduras

 

What about before we switched over?

 

We didn't change over until October this year so any electricity or gas we used up till then will have generated CO2 that we will need to off set.

 

Using the ever trusty Carbon Footprint calculator we worked out we created 1171kg of CO2 using gas and 1545kg using electricity. 

 

So the total CO2 we need to off-set for our gas and electricity prior to switching over is 2716kgs.

 

An easy way to Off Set

 

The Carbon Footprint "Shop and Offset" page has links to places like Amazon and eBay.  If you got to those websites via the links you will automatically make an off-set contribution depending of how much you spend.

 

One £42 purchase on Amazon via the "Shop and Offset" page meant we off-set 336kgs of CO2 by again investing in the Reforestation in the Great Rift Valley in Kenya.

 

We just need to off-set the remaining 2380kgs, which we will do by using these links for future purchases.

What else we plan to do?

  1. Look at ways to off set the CO2 produced by our cars.

  2. Look at ways to reduce our gas consumption.

  3. Look at ways to reduce our electricity consumption.

  4. Look at greener ways to get our gas and electricity.

  5. Look at ways to reduce our water consumption.

  6. Work out what our Carbon Footprint is after we have done the above.

  7. Find out how to recycle more and monitor just how much we do.