Australian Electricity from Renewable Sources
One of the resolutions I intended making for 2008 was to pay a little extra to purchase some or all of our household electricity from green sources. All the major suppliers offer greenpower in some way or another. One motive was so that graphs from the Home Energy Analysis System would illustrate the decrease in carbon dioxide from our electricity use.
GreenPower is defined as coming from “any generator built or commissioned after 1 January 1997 that is GreenPower approved”. Most of Australia’s 8% power from renewable sources is hydroelectric and was in place prior to 1997. Approximately 0.4% of total electricity fits the GreenPower definition - electricity generation facilities are not built overnight but 0.4% in ten years is a modest record.
I was a little puzzled that some suppliers offer a fixed cost irrespective of consumption rather than an increase in the rate per kWh. The author of this blog post was also curious and has created a detailed analysis of this question. He has exposed the many inconsistencies of the Australian green power market.
For instance, the various retailers had customers in 2006 purchasing 4.8 times the accredited GreenPower produced. This doesn’t make sense, and means that anyone paying for 100% renewable energy cannot realistically claim to be adding zero CO2 to the atmosphere.