Next on my list is changing my energy supply to be greener. My current non-green tariff is now up for renewal and so this weekend, I started looking for potential suppliers. I wanted to find out more about what @Tom mentioned above in terms of the REGO certificates.
A lot of websites say they’ll match 100% of the electricity with renewable sources. At first, I thought that this was good because I understood it as they bought 100% renewable energy for their renewable tariffs. However, it could mean that they actually buy enough REGO certificates to account for the all renewable energy they sell – and they are not actually buying any extra green power, and therefore they are not supporting the renewable power generators.
I was struggling to find out which suppliers purchased renewable energy direct from the generators of green energy and which just bought the certificates. Luckily, Which? came to my rescue. They have ranked energy providers by those that consistently generate enough renewable energy themselves or buy directly from generators; those that generate some renewable energy or buy directly; and those that are not buying directly from renewable generators and are buying REGO certificates. Here is the link - https://www.which.co.uk/news/2019/09/how-green-is-your-energy-tariff/
They ranked the greenest suppliers as Ecotricity and Good Energy, however I think I might go with Octopus that sits in the middle group because they have a tariff called Agile Octopus which allows you to save money on your electricity if you can shift your daily electricity use outside of peak times. https://octopus.energy/agile/. I now need to make a few phone calls to find out more!
Is anyone on the Agile Octopus tariff? If so, can you let me know how it is working for you?