alexlockwood.net

Back in June I interviewed Fred Pearce for a book chapter (to be published next year). My first question was if coverage of climate change had slowed. No, he said, and his employers (magazines such as New Scientist) were looking for more stories from him. He also said that the Guardian was increasing its pool of freelancers and wanting more copy from him.

And so this week launches Fred’s new Guardian column: Greenwash. Fred has been writing on environment and cimate change for years (see his book Confessions of an Eco Sinner), and there’s probably no-one better to tackle this subject in the UK. This is why, in his own words:

My job is to keep a broad perspective of the science as well as the policy, and be a bit of a policy wonk I suppose, and be in place to blow the whistle if someone is talking rubbish. And that can be around climate change or biofuels or if maybe the IPCC aren’t telling us how bad it really could be. It’s my job to focus on the sniffing around and explaining the boundaries of the debate.

His first column looks at the greenwashing of energy companies and their eco-friendly tariffs which, Fred says, are nothing of the sort (at least not for the big players E.On, British Gas and EDF). This is the heart of the issue:

Under government rules, electricity suppliers have to make sure that a certain percentage of their electricity is generated from renewable sources, like wind turbines, solar panels and burning wood or plants. This is called the renewables obligation.

The percentage rises each year. For the year ending March 2007, the most recent for which there are published stats on how the companies performed, the obligation was 6.7%. But the companies collectively only managed to generate 4.7% of their electricity from renewables.

Most of the big companies missed the target by a country mile. EDF managed 5%, E.On 3.6% and British Gas 4%.

This may not all be the fault of the suppliers… But the fact remains that the suppliers are selling green energy, often at premium prices, to green-minded customers as if this were on top of their existing commitments.

It’s good that the Guardian is picking up its coverage of greenwashing, and that Fred’s work is intertwining with that of Bibi van der Zee, who writes on activism. What was missing for me from this column was a bit more uncovering of the government rules under which the companies can, legally, make their misleading claims. For example:

[Companies such as BT] have been very willing to pay premium prices to buy “green electricity”. So keen, in fact, that they buy more green electricity than is being generated in the first place. It is hard to believe that this is possible within the law, but I am told it is. An electricity supplier that has access to, say, two gigawatt (GW) hours of renewable electricity, can sell 4GW-hours labelled as renewable, says [Virginia] Graham. “Renewable electricity is often being sold twice, perhaps more. Double counting is enormous.”

Why is this double counting legal? And what penalties are there for these companies missing their targets? Looks like the only penalty is ours.

Fred does go onto so that “in August, the environment secretary, Hilary Benn, announced plans for a crackdown on companies making dodgy claims about their carbon neutrality” but that sounds to me a little like the generality that Fred and Bibi warn is a symptom of greenwashing. What exactly is Hilary Benn doing, when, and by how much?

If greenwashing companies are given the paintbrush and paint by the loose government rules, I’d like to see the Guardian sticking its nose into those pots, so to speak.

(x-posted from The Current Climate)