Consumer Focus, the body which represents the voice of consumers around the UK, has recently published proposals that could require increasingly popular electricity price comparison websites, such as uSwitch and Moneysupermarket.com, to clearly state the ‘greenness’ of the tariffs displayed online. Under these plans they would be required to list under their green tariff section of their website only those tariffs certified under the independent Green Energy Supply Certification Scheme.

Good Energy took a leading role in helping to establish the Scheme because we felt that consumers were being misled by some less ethical energy suppliers. We believe that certification is a vital tool to help those consumers who want to reduce their carbon emissions and make a difference to climate change. So, we’re urging Good Energy supporters to please write to Consumer Focus before the deadline of Friday 20th August to outline why they think the Green Energy Certification Scheme should be used more online.

As ever, we’re keen to make this as easy as possible for you, so we’ve listed below some suggestions of the points you might want to include in a letter to Consumer Focus; please feel free to use these suggestions and of course stress the reasons why you chose a green tariff in the first place.
 
- People, households and businesses that choose a green tariff do so to reduce their own carbon emissions. This is often for strong personal, moral and ethical reasons but also because they feel that they want to play their part in helping to encouraging the greater use of renewable electricity.

- Many tariffs that claim to be green do so purely for marketing reasons and when carefully examined actually do very little in terms of making a positive environmental impact.

- Ofgem introduced the industry-led Green Tariff Guidelines on which the independent Certification Scheme is based in order to differentiate between those tariffs that cynically trade on popular sentiment and cash in on the ‘green agenda’, and those tariffs that genuinely are linked to renewable electricity generation. Under the Scheme only those tariffs where the electricity supplied is matched 100% by renewable energy are included.

- At present there is no recognised mechanism to establish the relative ‘greenness’ of tariffs on the price comparison websites that thousands of people use each year to choose their electricity supplier. The popularity of these websites rests on their ability to present the wide range of often complex information about various electricity tariffs in a clear and easy to read format so that the consumer can make an informed choice about which supplier they choose.

- At present these websites do not use the Green Energy Certification Scheme so consumers are unable to tell which tariffs are actually as green as they claim and really make a genuine contribution to reduce carbon emissions.

- If these websites exist to make consumer choice clearer and easier, then it is essential that the Certification Scheme, which has the same objectives, be used as the basis for displaying green tariffs.

- It would also help increase clarity for consumers if green electricity tariffs were ranked not on price or alphabetically but according to supplier fuel mix, i.e. the overall amount of renewable electricity provided by the supplier.

To submit your response, simply pop it in the post to:

Jenni Lucas
Consumer Focus
Artillery House
11-19 Artillery Row
London SW1P 1RT

Or alternatively you can email it to jenni.lucas@consumerfocus.org.uk or fax it to 020 7799 7901