Weekly conversations: Renewable energy in the UK - Energy Providers

Every week, I am going to try to post one interesting conversation I have had over the week which involves renewable energy. 

This week I was talking to a friend about renewable energy companies. We recently swapped to a renewable energy provider (Green Star) for our gas and electricity and were surprised by how little we had heard about them beforehand. You would expect a company providing 99% of its electricity renewably would want to brag about it but they don't seem to, at least to the general public. 

This made me think about the customer side of renewable energy in the UK. In some ways, the ease of swapping from a traditional energy provider to a renewable one seems to facilitate the renewable drive in UK society at the moment. However, having changed to a renewable provider, we feel no different. No fireworks, no overwhelming feeling of pride, nor has it made us any more inclined to pursue a renewable way of life elsewhere. If anything, we use more energy! We no longer feel bad about burning up the planet by leaving a single TV standby light on. 

In fact, I don't think we would have chosen to swap if it wasn't going to make our utilities bill cheaper. The effect of changing just seems like, nothing. London still looks like daylight at 2am with all the streetlights and car headlights. Our small student flat buying their energy from a renewable supplier just seems so minute in comparison.

Perhaps then this is one reason why renewable energy hasnt taken over in the UK yet. Renewable energy companies don't get themselves known to the public in the same way as suppliers like British Gas. Even then, changing to a renewable supplier has such a small impact on the consumer that people must think (we know we have) - why bother? The electricity still goes through the same cables and grids, and still comes from the same place. Perhaps until changing to a renewable supplier gives direct benefits to consumers (such as a lower price, as we found), the renewable industry just won't gain enough consumer support to start competing with traditional, fossil fuel based energy providers. 

But maybe we're just cynical students.