The greenest tariffs
When your energy supplier buys renewable (green) electricity and its accompanying certificates directly from generators, such as UK wind or solar farms, this provides a clear benefit to the UK renewable industry. Most energy suppliers that work this way will be transparent about the source of their electricity and list it on their website.
We’ve identified the following suppliers who all clearly list the renewable sources of their energy on their websites. We think these tariffs are as green as they get. Other suppliers may meet the same standard of sourcing direct from UK renewable energy generators but we couldn’t identify this from their websites at the time of our investigation.
We last checked in February 2020.
Moderately green tariffs
Some larger electricity suppliers will own or have partnerships with a mixture of green (renewable) and brown (regular fossil fuel) generators. Their standard tariff will provide electricity from a mix of sources, while the green tariff will be backed up by the REGOs from their low carbon electricity sources.
That is fine as far as it goes but growing numbers of people on their green tariff won’t necessarily mean they buy more renewable energy. Instead, they can just divert a higher percentage of the green energy they source to the green tariff and make their standard tariffs dirtier. So increased demand for these tariffs doesn’t necessarily lead to increased support for renewable generation.
Greenwash
Some electricity suppliers, including some who claim to supply 100% renewable energy, will do so simply buying up excess REGO certificates. These certificates are cheaply available from times of excess production across the EU and these tariffs do little to encourage the generation of renewable energy in the UK.
Green funds
A green fund usually involves paying a premium to contribute to a fund that will be used to support new renewable energy developments. Under this option, the existing electricity supply continues as normal, but your involvement could help to alter the mix of energy sources in the future toward renewable sources (depending on the type of tariff).
The new generation projects supported will probably also receive support under existing government support schemes.