I think that it’s safe to say that the Copenhagen Summit didn’t exactly go as planned. The entire two week period seemed to lurch from one disagreement/misunderstanding to another, culminating in a chaotic final few hours where a non-binding volunatry agreement was “agreed”.
The fallout from these negotiations continues to spill out through the newspapers and blogs.
The upshot of it all is that not one party can be satisfied with the outcome.
The Climate change advcates are extremely disapponited with the outcome
The sceptics are a little happier, but are still left with the fact that most parties actually do believe that climate change is a scientific reality
Governments of the “rich” developed EU countries are unhappy that stronger targets could not be agreed
The superpowers of China, USA and India were hamstrung by political infighting
UK tried hard – Ed Milliband says so……….
It was all quite sad really, there seemed to be a lack of focus in the negotiations as a whole. Are these big international conferences really the right environment to get “deals” such as these done? Questions must be asked surely.
UK Energy company Britsh Gas has launched an app for the iPhone that allows you to monitor your home energy usage. Unfortunatley, we haven’t managed to get our hands on it to test it. From the blurb on the website it appears to be simply a case of submitting your meter reading and getting an accurate bill. If this app proves successful, it will be interesting to see if other major energy suppliers respond with their own apps – this could be a potentially interesting area. We have however seen some comments which highlight that this apps process is not as simple as its made out to be.
Do you have the British Gas iPhone App installed yet? What are you thoughts!?………….
As we are a green electricity site most of our posts and articles, as interesting they maybe are about rising energy prices, how to save money and energy, global warming, climate change and what we are doing to save the planet of an unprecedented apocalypse. Today I thought it would be a nice change to go on about one of the great visual electrical phenomenon’s our great planet has to offer.
The Northern Lights.
From October through to March you can catch a glimpse of the northern lights in Iceland. This particular picture taken over the town of Borgarfjord caught my attention just like it will catch yours. Like something out of Halloween, the small church has an electrical cross above its door complimenting the green skies above. This magnificent glow lit up the skies for more than 3 hours.
What are the Northern Lights?
Northern Lights is a common name for the Aurora Borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn. The lights are created when our star “the sun” fires of particles that hit the earth’s natural force field creating these beautiful green and sometimes red electrical light shows.
Worried about your gas, electric and water bills and whether you’re wasting energy in your home?
A new program from the city of Fresno’s Planning and Development Department can help. It’s a new thing called the energy survey programme where basically they scan all areas of your house with an infra red device to see where the energy is escaping from your house. Not only is this a remarkable tool but saves you hundreds on your energy bill’s and also great news for the planet.
This plan is the outcome of a $4.6 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. More than 2,800 communities received grants in March to help reduce energy use and fossil fuel emissions. Visalia also gained money for a program that’s similar. Madera is interested in learning more from Fresno’s program.
There’s one slight problem, only homes prior to 1998 are contacted for this, if your home was built after 1998, the Title 24 California building code required energy efficiency standards. Inspectors use high-tech infrared cameras and various other tools to conduct thermal scans inside and out the home to determine where theheat is escaping the house. It generally takes an hour and half to two hours.
It’s thought that windows would be the main escape route for heat but after carrying out surveys inspectors are starting to notice different areas of the house are just as bad and maybe even worse especially around ceiling ducks.
This seems like a great opportunity for the public to save on energy and get there sky high bills down to an affordable price, and is also can great news for the planets global warming problems.
In line with the Scottish Goverment’s recent announcement that it was investing in a Scottish and Southern Energy and University of Strathclyde project Centre for Renewable Energy Excellence (CEERE) in Glasgow – the Welsh Government has come out and backed a similar scheme. The Low Carbon Research Institute (LCRI). This is a Welsh university research project led by the Cardiff University’s School of Architecture.
This intriguing project aims to help businesses in Wales develop innovative carbon reduction projects and meet strict carbon emission targets.
If truth be told there are a number of these consumer representative organisations out there – all undertaking extremely worthy work and research in order to keep the energy firms on their toes and save us a bit of cash on our cheaper gas and electrcity bills. However, by far the most comprehensive and sensible of these websites that we have seen is that of the Energy Retail Association (ERA).
Their website contains a wealth of information covering the entire gamut of the energy retail experience. Amongst the topics covered are:
Energy supply complaints – how to deal with them
Helping customers with energy efficiency – what does all the jargon mean? (Atlantic have a cheaper gas and electricity page on this)
Services for vulnerable customers – don’t worry help is at hand, you just need to know where to look!
New code of practice for customer billing
Preventing disconnection
Switching Supplier – the quickets and easiest methods
New technology – Smart meters
Independent code for doorstep sales practice
All of the information is presented in a very easy to read manner – we were impressed. ERA also undertake research into all aspects of the UK energy insustry. Their recent findings include that 32% of UK households are not even aware of the existence of the smart metering programme.
As you have probably read in your newspaper today, OFGEM is warning UK consumers that they should be seriously considering switching energy suppliers in the next few months. This is because the popular fixed price energy tariffs offered by some of the biggest energy suppliers are coming to an end in August. Many people signed up for these in the last couple of years in order to protect themselves from rising energy bills, Moneysupermarket.com has said that 70% of customers switched to these types of deals last year.
OFGEM warns that unles consumers switch now they could face a rises of over £300 in their annual energy bills.
This is obviously concerning news for all UK energy consumers out there. In the current economic climate the last thing that households need to hear is that their energy bills are going to increase no matter what. We can but hope that the end of this fixed price regime will perhaps spark some new initiatives amongst some of the biggest energy suppliers and the anticipated rises won’t hit consumers as hard as predicted.
Major companies are finding Tendering for energy contracts a little more daunting than usual this weather due to a number of reasons, firstly the recession has hit all major businesses along with all the small ones. In fact no business is immune to this and the energy sector is different. Another reason (well this is more of a hunch) is the fallout with Russia over the supply for gas. Late last year the Russian government had a fall out with Georgia and accused them of siphoning gas from the pipe lines that run through the country and feed Europe with their energy needs, once again this led to prices going as everyone was after the same gas and electricity tendering energy procurement contracts.
With all the above mentioned mixed in with other scenarios that are a little more unclear the energy tendering market is a little unclear, a result of this has lead to more than 50% of Energy companies now paying over the odds.
Understandably, as consumers we are very much focused on getting the cheapest gas and electricity bills that we can. There are very few of us that actually give any thought to the ‘bigger picture’ of who we are actually paying to supply our energy. This is a particular issue in these difficult economic times – anything that can lower our household bills is welcome.
With this in mind, we felt that it would be useful to compile a list of the current ‘big six’ energy suppliers in the UK, with details on who really controls these companies.
E.ON – Based in Dusseldorf, Germany, completed take over of Powergen in 2002.
EDF (Électricité de France) – Paris based, produced 22% of EU Electricity in 2003, 74.5% of which was from Nuclear Power.
NPower – It’s parent comapny is german giant RWE
Scottish Power – Controlled by Iberdola, a huge Spanish Utilities company
British Gas – Centrica ltd took over the British Gas name in the UK
Scottish and Southern Energy – Based in Perth, Scotland since its inception in 1998
So, there we are – as you can see there are some rather intersting results in there. If you get your power from E.ON, EDF, NPower or Scottish Power, you are essentially further swelling the coffers of some of the biggest utilities companies in Europe. British Gas parent company Centrica is at least UK based, but has significant interests in Europe and North America – how can we be sure that our money is being re-invested in improving their UK energy supply?.
Scottish and Southern Energy, established in 1998 with the merger of Scottish Hydro and Southern Electric is the second largest supplier of natural gas and electricity in the UK. It’s headquarters are in Perth, Scotland.
Of course, all of these companies are in the energy business to make money from us, no matter where they are based. However, surely we should be more concsious of who we are paying for our energy in the future.
