Switch to GreenPower
and cut your greenhouse gasses for as little as $1 per week!
Back in October we suggested you do your very own DIY sustainability audit. Three cheers for those that got on board. It’ll certainly make a big difference to your home’s impact on the planet. But as always, there’s more you can do. And this month, it’s switching to GreenPower.
In Victoria, we’re dependent on brown coal. It’s a big part of why we’re amongst the world’s worst polluters.
Luckily for us (and our furry friends) there is an alternative! GreenPower is the single easiest way to cut your greenhouse gas emissions from electricity use. And there’s no need to change your current supplier. It’s widely available and it’s just as reliable as traditional electricity generated from burning coal. Pure brilliance.
So the deal is when you sign up for GreenPower, your electricity retailer buys electricity from renewable sources on your behalf. It’s like getting solar panels or a wind turbine, without having to work out how to install it. Buying GreenPower means that you’re supporting the renewable energy industry and reducing your emissions from electricity to almost zero. It’s that easy for you to reduce your impact on the planet.
Yes, we see those dollar signs circling above your head and you’re right; GreenPower does cost a bit more. But the exact amount depends on where you buy it from and how much you use. As a rough indication – 100 percent GreenPower (zero emissions) should cost you about $6 extra a week. And 25 percent GreenPower should cost you about $1 extra a week. Of corse this cost will be well and truely offset by the savings made by changing light bulbs or turning down the thermostat. So get involved and get the whole shebang. We think it’s an investment worth making!
Get on board!
If you do choose to join the 900,000 odd Aussies that have already made the switch, make sure you switch to accredited GreenPower, and not just any company claiming to be sustainable. To check out the best of GreenPower products in Victoria swing past here.
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Business Advice
Compare and Save on your Business Electricity and Business Gas bills by using our FREE price comparison and switching service. Whether you're a small business, large business, commercial business or home-based business, Make It Cheaper can help cut your energy prices down to size.
http://www.business-energy.com.au/
I have posted these energy saving techniques for my customers and I have recieved a good deal of postive comments!
Business Electricity – Compare
Very good article! I appreciate your post on energy saving techniques. I agree that we need to generally use less electricity and also acknowledge that a site such as Switch Wise would be very useful to the readers of this site in finding ways to save money on electricity.
www.business-energy.com.au
The value of GreenPower - and up-to-date links
Thanks for the info about the link being out of date – we’ll let our colleagues at the ACF know.
For up to date information check the government’s site www.greenpower.gov.au. This is where you can also find the audits of current purchases of GreenPower. As of September last year there were 944,244 households and 35,862 businesses signed up for GreenPower. That’s almost one million households willing to put their own money on the table to have a positive impact against climate change.
As regards some of the other questions…
I purchase 100% GreenPower for my home, and although I realise that the electrons coming through the grid to my house aren’t necessarily from renewable energy, I can be sure that the proportion of energy that I use is being delivered to the grid from renewable sources.
This investment in renewable energy is happening above and beyond the government’s Renewable Energy Target (RET). I’m happy to pay for renewable energy, but I’m not satisfied that the RET will deliver enough (only 20% of Australia’s energy by 2020), so I’m investing beyond that. From ‘back-of-the-envelope’ calculations, if the uptake rate of GreenPower continued at what it was in 2009, we could have an extra 17% of renewable energy in Australia by 2020, on top of the RET. Regardless of where that power is used, that’s a pretty good investment by my thinking.
While ideally we’d like to see big industrial users like Alcoa using renewable energy too, this is a long way from happening in the short term – Alcoa have just signed up to continue using polluting brown coal for another 26 years. While we are continuing to push for more renewable energy, we’re only going to see the big cuts in our emissions when we use this to replace our most polluting coal power stations – starting right here in Victoria with Hazelwood.
The link looks old
Just checked out the link Sara posted the info seems a bit out of date. Jackgreen are listed for example and they fell over at the end of last year and the contact us button doesnt seem to be working. Is there other info out there.
Peter M
Greenpower how powerful is it.
Someone told me that the greenpower accreditated companies have to source your energy bill by renewables within 12 months of signing up. So if a larger proportion of people, than are currently signed up, switched this would flow into building renewable infrastructure. If everyone signed up then the system would fall over but what a message that would send to Pollies and the Powerlobby.
So on one hand I am in favour of donating to push growth in renewables but on the other hand I dont like that even if all householders switched then business's like Alcoa would do business as usual and snort up my green energy so Tims suggestion of separation makes sense and from what i have heard is how the Government are approaching the REC scheme.
Does anyone know how many households/business are signed upto Greenpower as a proportion of total electricity????
Peter M from www.ccof.org.au
GreenPower does not cut "your emissions", it works as a donation
I contribute to GreenPower but am saddened by the continual misinformation about how the scheme works. Under Australia's National Greenhouse and Electricity Reporting (NGER) legislative package, emissions (and avoided emissions) from all sources of energy generation are allocated to all consumers in proportion of use. The only electricity that exists for customers to buy is standard grid electricity at average state greenhouse intensity and there is no other greenhouse accounting system in Australia.
Contributors to Greenpower can feel good that they have contributed to lowering emissions of all consumers but if they believe they have reduced their own electricity emissions then they have either been misled or are double counting the "avoided emissions" and "use" attributes. Once the attributes are allocated to all customers (including the biggest electricity consumers in the state that take the lions share of the GreenPower customers contribution as a free ride), there is no way to undo this allocation to hand it to a customer in any contract from the grid.
GreenPower consumers are still liable to pay Mandatory Renewable Energy Target pass thriough costs and when a price on carbon comes in they will need to pay for that as well .
Of course it doesn't need to be this way if the renewables were netted out of the state grid factors and accounted for properly, but until that happens, GreenPower is nothing more than a donation scheme under law.
I commend Environment Victoria for allowing this blog, unlike the GreenPower Website that provides no opportunity for customers to discuss issues about the supposed products they are paying for.
I would be happy for an open discussion on this matter with Environment Victoria, GreenPower and the Australian Government - Department of Climate Change.
Tim K
Use it every day
Love GreenPower. Best use of power is not to use it at all, but when I have to is good to know every time I have to flip a switch a little something is going back to the environment.
GreenPower at a glance
When we moved recently I used the GreenPower guide to check out our options. Speaking with my buying power is what I love most. More ways to do this please!
That GreenPower resource is really good...
I used it when I was trying to decide between AGL and Origin.
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