Power

Our current contract with the power-company is coming to an end. And instead of simply continuing with them, we decided to look around and see if we could get a better deal. And boy, could we ever!

what our current provider offers us would cost about 1200+e/year. Looking around we got an offer that would cost about 850e/year, plus we would get these credit-points we could use in shops and restaurants. 350e is quite a bit of money. We also got offer that would be around 1000+e/year.

Now, here's where it gets tricky. We would like to support sustainable energy and such. And the cheapest company uses mostly fossil fuels. I believe that they have about 60+% fossils, with the remaining 40% is split between renewable energy and nuclear. The 1000+e/year would be generated with windmills and museum hydroelectric (museum hydroelectric means these old and small-scale hydroelectric power-plants that aren't really competetive anymore). Our current provider (the 1200e/year) would be about 60% renewables, with remaining split between nuclear and fossils. They do also sell green energy that has the endorsement of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation.

This basically leaves us with two offers: 850e/year generated with mostly fossil fuels. But it's cheapests by far. The other option is 1000+e/year, 100% sustainable energy. Our current provider isn't really an option, they cost more, while not really offering the benefits of the 1000+e-offer.

Now, if we were really good World Citizens (tm) we would pick the more expensive option. But then again, 150e is quite a bit of cash. And still, part of that energy would be generated through sustainable means. And we could cut back on our power-consumption. Then again, we could to that with the more expensive offer as well, while having 100% green energy.

These things we re easy back when we (the people in general) didn't care about "green stuff". We could just do comparisons based on price. Now we have to take account the color of power, as well as it's price.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

The more it costs the earth, the more it will cost your company in the long run.

Janne said...

Oh, this isn't for our company, it's for me and the Mrs. True, there are long-term things that we need to take in to account here. However, there are complications. It would seem that choosing the greener but more expensive energy would be the wise choice. Then again, we have been thinking about adding more insulation to our apartment, and that could drastically recude our energy-consumption. But that costs money.

So what to do? take the cheaper energy, and use the money we save to add insulation to our apartment. Or take the more expensive eletricity and do without the added insulation? we might be able to get the green energy AND added insulation, but that would put a big dent on our budget. Then again, I just bought the camera, so who am I to talk about budgets :)?