Utility Industry News from Energy Solutions
The advice offered by energy brokers and consultants helps many energy buyers find the right electricity or gas contract for their business. And with over 60% of UK energy now procured through energy brokers like ourselves, it demonstrates how strong this proposition has become. But why do so many businesses choose to use an energy consultancy firm such as Energy Solutions - The Energy Consultants, rather than simply employing internal resources to fulfill their requirements? There is a general acceptance that using consultants provides an independent and fresh approach to evaluating opportunities that can add significant value.
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Bringing climate change home
Posted on March 28th, 2008 No commentsWhen I read the newspapers yesterday one particular headline in the Independent seemed especially poignant “Cracking up: the ice shelf as big as Northern Ireland”. Scientists have discovered the Wilkins ice shelf on the coast of Antarctica is in great danger of breaking away from the mainland; and it’s as big as Northern Ireland!
The peninsula is the fastest-warming region in the Antarctic and has seen some of the largest temperature rises on earth – 0.5C per decade. Ice shelves in Canada's far north have shrunk by as much as 90% since 1906, and six others have retreated in the past few years. This really does highlight the way in which climate change needs to be emphasized on a daily basis.
This news comes nearly three years after an ice shelf bigger than Manhattan broke off an island in the Canadian Arctic in August 2005, underlining the fact that climate change should be more of a potent issue in society today (Click here to read the story) What needs to be stressed though is that the sheer enormity of an event such as a melting ice shelf means many people can’t associate using energy in their homes, or the way they travel as being a significant part of the problem.
I want to emphasize just how important it is everyone understands that simple changes to our behaviour can make a big difference. For example, just boiling enough water needed to make a cup of tea, not leaving a mobile phone charger plugged in or turning appliances off of standby will all help to reduce the amount of energy wasted.
If everyone took these simple actions then the amount of energy saved collectively would be substantial – and we’d be helping to prevent calamitous occurrences, like the Wilkins ice shelf breaking away, whilst at the same time saving energy, saving money and ensuring a healthy future for the planet. -
Do you understand your energy bill?
Posted on March 20th, 2008 No comments
Can you imagine a situation where your grocery shopping involved you having to guess the cost of food you were buying, with an accurate bill not arriving until three months later? It may sound ludicrous and yet this is the way that the vast majority of us currently shop for our gas and electricity! Our latest Green Barometer IV research report, launched yesterday, highlighted that nearly eight out of ten Brits don’t know what they’re paying for their gas and electricity. I am not surprised – have you ever tried to read your electricity or gas meters? Normally they’re hidden away in a cupboard under the stairs, in the garage or in my case at the bottom of the food cupboard - hardly conducive for helping you to keep track of your energy usage!Our study finds that energy bills are the most difficult for us to understand of any household bill: twice as hard as phone bills and four times as difficult as bank statements or credit card bills. This lack of transparency surrounding energy usage is one of the biggest problems holding back the UK's fight against climate change. This is where smart meters come in. They include a portable display unit that can be taken anywhere in the house and which would allow you to monitor how much energy was being used at any time – as well as over days, weeks, or even months.
All well and good you might be thinking, but how will simply knowing energy consumption help people to save energy? Well, this is where I believe that the energy suppliers will have an important role to play. Unlike so-called clip-on displays, smart meters offer a two way communication system between the householder and the energy supplier. What does this mean? Well, it would allow the energy supplier to monitor and assess your home energy use, and then based on this they could offer tailored energy saving recommendations that were relevant to your needs and situation.
International trials, in places such as Sweden and the United States have shown smart meters offer an energy saving potential of between 5 and 10 per cent. Even, using a conservative five per cent baseline, if everyone in the UK switched to smart meters British householders could save £1.2bn a year and the equivalent of 7.4 million tonnes of CO2 emissions – figures that can’t be ignored.
If you’d like to read the Green Barometer IV report then you can do so by clicking here. -
Inspector Gadget
Posted on March 11th, 2008 No commentsGadgets are not going away anytime soon and they are collectively prodigous consumers of natural resources, so I was particularly taken by an article in the “In Gadget” section of the Sunday Times yesterday. It revealed that Konarka - an American energy company - have just unveiled working solar cells that can be printed directly onto flexible plastic, using standard ink-jet technology. Rather than being made from expensive and rigid silicon, Konarka’s solar cells are made from cheap organic polymers. The potential for this product is enormous. You quite literally put the cells anywhere - from mobile phones, MP3 players, or even on a hat!
I am not, however, advocating that we should just sit around and wait for a technological fix to solve climate change. I still believe that all of us must act now to reduce our energy consumption BUT what a bonus it would be if these solar cells became the norm and helped to transform the way we power our gadgets! -
Green Energy / Greenwash!
Posted on March 6th, 2008 No commentsOne of the problems with green electricity tariffs is their lack of transparency, with current EU regulations only requiring suppliers to provide details of the overall fuel mix of the electricity generated. Therefore the Energy Saving Trust, in coalition with energywatch, the National Consumer Council, the Renewable Energy Association sent a letter at the end of February to BERR Secretary, John Hutton and Defra Secretary, Hilary Benn asking them to make it a requirement for suppliers to reveal the renewable and non-renewable mix of every consumer’s energy supply (Click here to read the letter).
On a personal note, I want to see all green tariffs meet a standard that is genuinely green, comes from 100 per cent renewable sources of energy and delivers “additionality”. By that I mean customers know by signing up for a green tariff that they are helping to bring more renewable energy to the grid. If this isn’t achieved, we may need to introduce an extra label to make it clear which do and don’t meet these basic standards – such as our Energy Saving Recommended Scheme. This took away the confusion that people had when buying household products so they now know they are buying the best in class. The same should be true for green energy.