It’s Not Easy Being Green

02 Aug 2010 – Alicia Ayars

In an effort to get out of the office and have a little fun, SustainAbility London recently spent the day at the Mudchute Farm on the Isle of Dogs, contributing some of our man (and woman) power to an organisation that relies heavily on volunteers. During that lovely day, I proceeded to pick a fight with a colleague about the merits of purchasing so called “green energy” as a private consumer. Now to be clear, this wasn’t a fight as much as it was a discussion that left me questioning a number of preconceived notions. Having a background in corporate accounting for renewable energy, I believed I was in the right; that energy purchased from the grid could not be counted purely as “green”. While a company like Good Energy may contribute to increasing the “green mix” of the grid, an individual purchaser/customer of Good Energy’s cannot verify that what they have purchased is physically green.

The problem, I realised, was that the argument I was making was based on my knowledge of corporate purchases of green energy and Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) while my colleague was making a more nuanced point. “I’m not purchasing a REC, am I?” he said. What was that? Average citizens aren’t purchasing RECs? So, what are they purchasing and how is green energy “guaranteed” to private customers?

For those of you curious as to what a “REC” actually is, the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute qualifies it as a “certificate that is issued when one megawatt-hour of electricity is generated and delivered to the grid from a qualifying renewable energy source, such as wind, solar or biomass.” Essentially, the purchaser of a REC has sponsored the delivery of that megawatt-hour to the grid, but that is not necessarily the megawatt-hour that will be fed into the sponsors’ meter. This point is undisputable and as I discovered, companies like Good Energy that don’t sell RECs but sell renewable electricity, do NOT claim to their customers that their purchase is physically “green”. Does this mean I won the argument? Not quite, but I will return to the point below.

Amidst all of this, I began to think about similar discussions I’ve had focusing on green energy; because how we discuss green/clean/renewable energy/electricity and the language we use matters. Our understanding of these terms ties directly to the value we believe is derived from environmental benefits and is fundamental to the way we (as a society) spend our resources. I also wanted to understand why private customers are paying more for green energy than their neighbours (according to British Gas the average consumer spends £1082 per year and while I couldn’t find an average for purchasers of green energy, Good Energy admits that it is more expensive).

Fundamental to this conversation, is the way corporations refer to their green energy pruchases. Often the term “carbon neutral” is thrown about, as if renewable energy is equivalent to a carbon offset (which it’s not). An offset is defined as the reduction, removal, or avoidance of GHG emissions that occur elsewhere. In Michael Gillenwater’s paper, Maintaining Carbon Market Integrity, he highlights that the “difference between RECs and offsets is that credible offset programs establish valid claims to emissions reductions by meeting both additionality and ownership conditions.”

While there are elements of ownership that can be argued, additionality is all but impossible to prove. The point Gillenwater ultimately makes is that additionality cannot reasonably be established and therefore blurs the claims of environmental benefits, including GHG emissions reductions. His logic is as follows:

“While [some] of these projects may in fact be additional, others would likely have been implemented…because of the existence of government incentives, such as the Production Tax Credit…If RECs are treated as equivalent to GHG offsets, this incorrectly assumes that the incentives provided by REC markets caused the installation of all renewable energy generation capacity participating in those markets.”

So what does all of the above mean? It means that when a REC is claimed as a carbon offset, it undermines the integrity of the offset market. When a REC is claimed simply as a REC, is shows a willingness to drive an increasingly green mix in the national grid, which is incredibly important if we (as a society) are going to meet our emissions reductions commitments.

And for private customers, here is where the plot thickens. When I initially reviewed Good Energy, I missed a vital piece of information: all of their electricity is certified by the Green Energy Scheme, meaning the tariff will also deliver additional environmental benefits, including carbon offsetting. A total of 7 companies supplying household tariffs are certified under this scheme including British Gas, E.On, EDF, Good Energy, npower, Scottish Power and Scottish Hydro. In a very roundabout way, this means my colleague can actually claim that his purchase of renewable electricity has additional environmental benefits.

I think this means we both won. While the private purchaser of green energy cannot claim that what they are fed through the grid is green (my argument), they have still contributed to the greening of the grid and have contributed to the purchase of valid carbon offsets (his argument).

Ultimately this journey of discovery has shown me that there is a danger in casually using terms like “green energy”, “entirely renewable”, “carbon neutral”, and the list goes on. While writing this piece I was often confused by the information I found and the argument I was trying to make. Within the green energy movement there is an inherent element of confusion and the more casual we are with our language, the more we perpetuate this confusion.

The moral of all of this? Don’t pick a fight on a company away day!