Green Electricity Suppliers

Choosing a GREEN electricity supplier is an important step in reducing our carbon footprint.  In Humshaugh we estimate more than 62% of our current carbon footprint is due to electricity, heating and cars.  With the phaseout of new oil and gas boilers and changing from diesel/petrol fuelled vehicles to battery electric vehicles both proceeding rapidly, it is now very important for us to focus on from where we buy our electricity.





We believe that to reduce our carbon footprint our electricity should come from 100% renewable energy generation.

The best way for us to do this is to own and operate our own renewable energy generation facilities within the Parish of Humshaugh.  If you use our Carbon Footprint Calculator you can see what this would mean.  Generating our own renewable electricity will not happen overnight, so we will continue to buy our electricity from suppliers.  Suppliers are licenced by Ofgem and every year the fuel mix of UK domestic electricity suppliers has to supplied.  To the end of 2020 there were at least 69 suppliers listed with Ofgem, but only 14 of these declared that they supply electricity generated exclusively from renewable energy. It may sound good that there are 14 suppliers, but you need to understand the detail to ensure that they are really delivering what is claimed.  So, how many companies are supplying truly green electricity?  This is not a simple question to answer, and at the end we provide our view on who really provides 100% renewable electricity.


Our definition of a 100% renewable electricity supplier is one who buys the electricity at full price from a renewable electricity generator.

From research we have discovered that some suppliers claim to be buying renewable electricity, but in fact they are only buying a certificate called a REGO (Renewable Energy Guarantees Origin) which only costs a small fraction of what renewable electricity actually takes to generate.  A renewable energy generator is given a REGO by Ofgem for every 1000 kWh’s of electricity generated.  These can be sold to suppliers separately from the electricity generated.  The cost of a REGO is about 0.04p, whereas a renewable generator spends about 5p to generate each kWh of renewable electricity. Claiming that, by a supplier buying a REGO you are purchasing electricity generated from renewables, does not make economic or environmental sense.  This practice is labelled as “green washing” by some organisations

We believe that we should all use truly green electricity.

We will be conducting further research and contacting supplier companies directly to confirm they meet our criteria of only supplying electricity generated from renewable sources and purchased directly from the generators at the correct price – and not just REGOs.

100% Renewable Energy Electricity Suppliers

This is the list of companies who claim to be 100% renewable electricity suppliers, and the results of our research.  We have visited each supplier’s website to confirm their claims, and will contact them if there is any ambiguity.