`Green' electricity goes up in smoke

Adelaide Advertiser
Saturday 19/7/2008 Page: 3

ELECTRICITY customers who signed up for green power with two of South Australia's major energy retailers are being delivered power predominantly sourced from coal and gas. The green power offerings of TRUEnergy and Origin Energy have been reduced because of the drought and marketing standard changes. TRUEnergy has reduced the amount of renewable energy it sells to households from 100 per cent to 10 per cent. Customers have to pay an extra $5 a week if they want a 100 per cent GreenPower plan.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, in determining the market status of "green power", ruled last December hydroelectricity was not a new technology to combat emissions and could not be referred to as green power. Origin Energy in March reduced its percentage of renewable electricity to 25 per cent from its 100 per cent green electricity plan because the drought lowered hydro electricity production in the eastern states.

TRUEnergy, from this month, is providing only 10 per cent renewable power on its green electricity plan because of new accreditation standards. It was using hydroelectricity to supply 90 per cent of the plan's power but hydro-electricity does not qualify for the Federal Government's GreenPower accreditation scheme.

TRUEnergy spokeswoman Sarah Stent said the company changed its plan because it wanted to increase the uptake of accredited GreenPower to lower greenhouse gases. "We have decided to specifically target our product offerings by no longer marketing a combination of accredited and non-accredited energy," she said. Origin Energy spokeswoman Yvette Reade said the drought had made hydroelectricity hard to source. "We offered a 90 per cent hydro and 10 per cent accredited green product and then upped that to 25 per cent accredited green product, with the rest being sourced by ordinary power," she said.