Green Energy Republic

A phone company that’s ringing true

New Good Energy partner C Mobile is a revolutionary pay-as-you-go mobile phone network fresh into the market. Determined to make a difference to climate change, the company has chosen Good Energy to supply its electricity and promises to pledge 20% of its profits to environmental projects in local communities, schools, clubs and non-profit groups. And all this while being 30% cheaper than every major UK mobile network. We caught up with founder Jon Lobb to find out more.

 
How did C Mobile come about?

I worked for the National Trust for 10 years managing woodlands and working on nature conservation so I’ve always had a passion for environmental issues. And then I got into the mobile phone business. It was the start of the dot-com boom and I got involved in a start up that we built into a company with a £20 million turnover and franchises all over the world. I decided to combine this knowledge with my ongoing passion for protecting the environment.

My first thought was, what do we all use? Mobile phones and energy – and probably far too much of that! People aren’t going to get rid of their mobile phones, they are a modern necessity. So why can’t we use them as a driver to do some good? And that good was to fund local renewable projects for community based and non-profit organisations. Vital to us was proving that it is possible to be a sustainable business in a very competitive sector.

How did you hear about Good Energy and what made you decide to become an affiliate partner?

It’s clear that we are on the same page. Microgeneration is about a lot of small changes giving you the long-term gain. And that’s directly influenced by my work in conservation. You might be looking after a two acre paddock and managing the habitat for butterflies. But taking the attitude that a two acre paddock doesn’t make a difference could mean you lose a whole butterfly species.

Tell us a bit more about your Advisory Panel.

The Panel help us to be as sustainable as we can within the business, but more importantly they assess potential renewable projects for us, providing a balanced view on how we can gain the greatest environmental impact for the money that we spend.

One project that particularly inspired us was right on our doorstep. St Andrews Primary School in Dorset recently secured the rights to use a nearby ancient disused mill race to generate hydro power. Once up and running the turbine should produce enough electricity for the entire school during term time. And in the holidays it will be earning them money thanks to the excess power exported to the grid.

Starting a business takes a lot of dedication. What gets you and your team up in the morning?

Being pioneers in such a well-established industry. It’s great to feel like you are creating something new from nothing and have the courage to look at something huge and try to change it for the better. That gives us the buzz when we wake up. But it also keeps us awake at night!

Bye bye January blues, hello 'Hot 100'

 Students at Nyangwayo School in Muhuru Bay, Western Kenya celebrate their solar installation.
Photo Credit - SolarAid

January is notoriously the gloomiest month of the year. The seasonal festivities are well and truly over leaving in their wake a few pounds of extra body weight, piles of wrapping paper and a fridge full of leftovers. And that’s not to mention the New Year’s resolutions that are already starting to look optimistic. But it doesn’t have to be this way, thanks to the charity SolarAid.

Set up by Dr. Jeremy Leggett, founder of Good Energy partner Solarcentury, SolarAid is on the hunt for 100 people to raise £1000 each, in any way they want (the more creative the better), over the next 12 months. So why not combine your New Year’s resolutions with helping to tackle both climate change and global poverty? Working in rural areas across East and Southern Africa, SolarAid installs solar panels on schools, community centres and clinics, so that some of the poorest people in the world can harness their own renewable energy and transform their lives.

Perhaps you have designated 2011 as the year to really get fit? Why not do a sponsored run or cycle ride? Or perhaps you just want to do something a sociable? Try organising a wine a series of wine tastings for your friends, a car boot sale or an entertainment event.

Becoming one of SolarAid’s ‘Hot 100’ fundraisers is totally free and the charity promises you a lot of fun along the way, with the chance to win an inspirational trip to Africa to see for yourself how they are spending the money you raise, as well as invitations to pub nights to meet fellow challengers, and an end of year dinner to celebrate your achievements.

For any enquiries, please email hot100@solar-aid.org. And remember, it's hot for a reason. There are only 100 spaces and it's first come, first served.

Like so many of the best innovations, SolarAid is a simple idea but one that has made a huge impact, reaching around 100,000 people with solar power since it began. What started as a group of volunteers meeting a couple of evenings a month, has now grown to more than 30 employed staff and over a hundred volunteers today - making it one of the fastest growing NGOs.

See the story of Bob Kokonya, a farmer in Kenya who was spending the majority of his meagre income on lighting his family home with dirty, inefficient and dangerous kerosene powered lamps. Thanks to help from SolarAid, Bob can now invest his income in his farm, in other basic needs, or in more solar power.

Dear Santa...

Here at Good Energy our belts are already tightening around mince pie filled tummies. The final Christmas Wish list comes from our partners at Farming Futures, which helps farmers and landowners prepare for the impacts of climate change. But before we hand over to them, we'd just like to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

 
Dear Santa,

We’ve been very good at Farming Futures this year: running a sell-out season of events, taking Twitter to the farm and winning a Global Green Award for our work informing and inspiring farmers and land managers to take action on climate change.

So what’s our wish for 2011? Well, ‘tis the season to be greedy, so we have a few:

Fair trade for British farmers, continued commitment to the Feed-in Tariffs and Renewable Heat Incentive from Government, a secure future for Farming Futures and finally we’d like to see the food industry raise a glass, shout ‘bottom up’ and let the farmers’ voices be heard when it comes to industry decision making. Farmers have the ideas, power and ingenuity to make the food system truly sustainable.

Merry Christmas from all at Farming Futures.

Dear Santa...

We asked Good Energy partner Solarcentury, the UK's leading independent solar electricity company, to reveal their hopes for the coming year.

 
Like Good Energy, Solarcentury has been working hard to increase awareness and take up of renewables for some time – it’s helped more buildings go solar than anyone else in the UK. We both think that solar photovoltaics and wind power are a great match, with those generating their own electricity from solar during the day using wind power at night. That's why Solarcentury recommends its customers sign up to Good Energy get both the Feed-in tariff and a 100% renewable electricity supply.

2010 has been a major turning point for solar power in the UK. Now, we must all move forward and make the very best of the Feed-in Tariff. At Solarcentury we hope that the coming year will see local councils generating their own power, helping them save money on fuel bills and creating an income from the Feed-in Tariff for other services. This in turn will see:

1/ Schools learning about renewables by seeing and understanding the solar power on their roof
2/ Those who spend too high a proportion of their income on escalating electricity bills at home starting to generate their own clean electricity
3/ Those who think the Feed-in Tariff is for the middle classes, realising it is a vital way to democratise energy and bring stable electricity prices to those who need it most. 
 
Let’s hope councils understand the true benefits of the Feed-in Tariff and move quickly to bring benefits to local boroughs across the UK, making 2011 the real kick start year for energy democratisation. 
 
As we say here at Solarcentury, 'love your roof'.

Dear Santa...

Good Energy customer and ethical British clothing brand Griffin has high hopes for sustainability in the fashion industry this year.

 

Griffin's one Christmas wish would be for the fast-fashion industry to disappear forever, in one large BOOM! Well, we know reality is never quite like that, but we do hope that the “throw-away fashion” aspect of our industry will be phased out completely to make way for transparency and a more sustainable future.

We would hope that our wish and approach will encourage consumers to become more conscious of what they buy and where their products come from. We are working to make our products more transparent, highlighting where the raw materials originate and how far they've travelled to ensure that customers feel confident that their products are not only produced ethically but to know that the quality will last. Wear more, buy less, and most importantly, source local.

Griffin is still offering 10% off all of its merchandise (including sale items) until January 31st 2011 if you quote GOODENERGY at the checkout.

Give Big this Christmas

 
As part of Big Give’s Christmas Appeal, any donation up to the first £5000 you make to our partners at Friends of the Earth and hundreds of other charities will be doubled until the matched funding runs out. Last year’s Christmas Appeal raised a staggering amount – over £8 million – in just a week.

Founded in October 2007 by Alec Reed, the founder of Reed the recruitment consultants, along with several international charities, the Big Give features over 7000 charities worldwide and helps to make donating to charities and finding new causes to support easier. Since its launch The Big Give has raised over £12 billion, the majority of which has been through Challenge Funding like the current Christmas Appeal.

‘Warm Homes’ is this year’s Friends of the Earth’s winter campaign, helping the millions of vulnerable people in Britain who live in cold homes that make them ill and cost a fortune to heat. But as Friends of the Earth explain, “homes with shoddy insulation and inefficient boilers don't just harm people's health and leak heat. The wasted energy means tonnes of climate-changing emissions are needlessly pumped into the atmosphere. More than a quarter of the UK's emissions come from heating our homes and water. Making our homes energy efficient is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to slash CO2 and help avoid dangerous climate change.”

There is no doubt that the work of Friends of the Earth and what we at Good Energy are trying to achieve are closely aligned. That’s why for every customer that switches to our 100% renewable electricity quoting Friends of the Earth we donate £50 to their vital campaigns. Click here to find out more.

If you’re a Good Energy customer who would like help with reducing your energy consumption our Customer Care Team’s energy efficiency advice service is fully endorsed by the Energy Saving Trust. This means they are the best people to speak to about making your energy bills lighter on the planet and your pocket – just give them a call on 0845 601 1410.

Stop the daylight robbery

 
As a general rule, most of us like to be awake when it’s light and asleep when it’s dark right? Right. Then it’s interesting to ponder why every year the country sets its clocks so that we spend more time sleeping in the light and less time living in it.

Headed up by our friends at 10.10, the Lighter Later campaign is calling for a three-year trial of a new timekeeping model where Britain’s clocks are moved forward by one hour throughout the year. But setting Britain’s clocks to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) +1 hour in winter and GMT +2 hours in summer is about far more than reducing the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder.

More natural light during the day would reduce the need for polluting electric lights, which according to Lighter Later would cut at least 447,000 tonnes of CO2 pollution – the equivalent to more than 50,000 cars driving all the way around the world – each year. It would also lower electricity bills and reduce peak power demand.

But there are also a host of social benefits. Lighter Later claims that the move would save 100 lives each year and prevent hundreds of serious injuries by making the roads safer. This in turn would save the NHS around £138 million a year through reducing road casualties. It would also reduce crime and the fear of crime, help make people healthier and tackle obesity by giving people more time to exercise and play sport outside in the evening, improve quality of life for older people, and create 60-80,000 new jobs in leisure and tourism, bringing an extra £2.5 - £3.5 billion into the economy each year.

With all the potential benefits it could bring Good Energy thinks it sounds like a no-brainer, and 10.10 say it’s the best proof yet that cutting carbon and making life better can and should go hand in hand.

The Daylight Saving Bill, is being presented as a Private Members Bill later today and it will be the first chance for the Government to decide whether they will back the proposal or not. It would seem that lots of MPs are planning to vote in favour, but the decision is really in the hands of the ministers, so the support of Vince Cable and Ed Davey in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is vital.

You can register your support for Lighter Later here, but we’ll keep you posted on how it goes in Parliament today.

Surf’s Up: the Museum of British Surfing joins Good Energy as an Affiliate Partner

   
Good Energy is proud to have a wide range of Affiliate Partners who share our goal of changing the way energy is made and used in the UK. In order to demonstrate the great work that others are doing to help the UK reach a 100% renewable future we’re showcasing a few of  them on our blog.


  
First up in the Affiliate spotlight is new partner the Museum of British Surfing. Founder and director Peter Robinson has spent more than a decade researching the UK’s surfing history and curating the collection, which includes almost 200 surfboards, some dating back to more than two centuries ago. Green Energy Republic spoke to him about how the Museum’s mission aligns with Good Energy’s.

1. What is the Museum of British Surfing?

The Museum of British Surfing is the national registered charity established to celebrate and preserve UK surf heritage. The Museum will be based in Braunton, North Devon and is due to open next summer thanks to a £250,000 funding package. It has a vast collection of surfboards and memorabilia tracing more than two centuries of the nation’s involvement with this ancient water sport. We're also looking to the present and future and are keen to encourage youth volunteering and involvement too. The plan is to create a carbon neutral building that will reflect the charity’s core aims to encourage the preservation of the natural environment – especially the coast and sea.

2.  Why did the Museum decide to become an Affiliate Partner of Good Energy and is there any part of our mission that particularly resonates with you?

It is one of our aims to become carbon neutral and Good Energy is, as far we're aware, the only truly 'green' energy supplier out there. We like the fact you don't just pay lip service to the environment - you do exactly what you describe when it comes to renewable energy. It's a clear and simple message.

3. Is renewable energy an important part of the Museum’s mission?

Yes, we plan to install sustainable energy technologies such as solar, air source heat, grey water collection and re-use at our museum. The main focus is on making sure we can achieve carbon neutral status, but if we can put renewable electricity back into the grid that will be a good thing.

4. Do surfing and the environment go hand-in-hand?

Absolutely, every time we surf we walk across beaches and enter the sea - and where we are based is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Everything from global warming and sea level rise, to marine and land based pollution have a big effect on our wonderful pastime. The wave in our new logo is to get the message across that the focus needs to be on the wave, not the surfer, and we must all act to protect our environment or we face the possibility of future generations not being able to surf.

Below: Left, Chairman of the charity’s trustees, Richard Gregory with Founder and Director, Peter Robinson. Photo, Rob Tibbles www.robtibbles.com