Climate explained: What is "green power"?

What is green power?

‍Youmay have heard that you can buy "green power". But maybe it's not quite as good as it sounds.

For example, you can switch to an electricity provider that sells "100% wind turbine power", but that doesn't actually change the power you get into the socket. Power from all sources, both fossil and renewable, is mixed together in the grid, so everyone gets exactly the same power out of their sockets.

So what do you get when you buy "green power"?

You buy so-called "certificates of origin". This means that you pay a little extra for your electricity, which then goes to the wind turbine owner, for example. In return, you get a certificate and the rights to say "I have green electricity".

Your electricity won't be greener - at all. On the other hand, you are supporting wind turbine owners a little bit - and a little bit right. Unfortunately, this also means that even if you have "wind turbine power", they still turn on the power plant a little more if you use a lot of power.

Certificates of origin

Now we've talked a bit about green power, why it's not as green as it sounds. Unfortunately, there are several problems with the concept. The ideal is that the purchase of certificates of origin creates a financial incentive for electricity producers to produce electricity where they can earn a little extra in the form of these certificates. This makes sense, but unfortunately, there is another problem with certificates of origin:

The basic problem is that the certificates are not bound in time or place. Let's say you charge your phone in Denmark one evening in August. You've bought green power from your electricity company, and now they need to buy some certificates of origin. The problem is that the power company can easily buy certificates of origin for some power that was made back in February 6 months earlier.

Your consumption has nothing to do with the certificate.

For example, we use almost no power at night because most people are asleep - but the wind is still blowing. Then you can just take all the excess certificates from the night and sell them the next day when we use power again. That doesn't push demand. In fact, we often see that the supply of certificates immediately exceeds demand, which pushes down the prices of the certificates - and thus also reduces the economic incentive to produce more green power.

Certificates from abroad

In addition, there is no requirement that the electricity must come from a local source. A Danish electricity company can easily buy 6-month-old certificates of origin from hydropower in Norway and call their customers' electricity green. In reality, however, the electricity in your contact is not sustainable, and it is actually the Norwegians' electricity that is green - not yours. This creates another problem, namely that electricity providers can buy certificates of origin from producers who don't need them and then sell them on the Danish market on a false premise. In Norway, people buy very few of these certificates of origin because their electricity is already primarily produced by hydropower - there is no real market in selling green electricity, as everyone knows that the electricity is already green. If the Norwegian producers sell the certificates to Denmark, it means that we in both Denmark and Norway say that our electricity is produced by the same hydropower - which of course it is not. And that's greenwashing of the highest order. The electricity you receive hasn't actually become a single bit greener, nor has it increased the demand for more renewable energy in Denmark.

What can you do as a consumer?

It may sound terrible, but green power is still not hopeless and there are some things you can do to make your power consumption a little more climate-friendly.

As we've established in this article, the current system doesn't work very well. The best thing you can do is to set up a solar panel or wind turbine yourself and start producing your own electricity. However, many people don't have the opportunity to do this. The next best thing is to follow the Council for Green Transition's guidelines:

• Buy electricity with certificates of origin from wind and solar from Denmark.
• Get power from someone who supports certified climate projects that offset the CO2 they emit in a safe and efficient way.
• Save power and use it when the grid is not loaded. (Next week's challenge)

And where can you get that kind of power?

You can't... anywhere. When we at Climaider started researching which electricity product was the most climate-friendly, we were really surprised to find out that there simply isn't a single electricity company in Denmark that complies with the three tips above. There are many companies that comply with one of the tips, but none that comply with all three. We emailed and called back and forth with the Danish Green Transition Council, who confirmed that they currently do not have a single electricity company in Denmark that they would recommend. Therefore, we simply decided to do something about it. We were put in contact with the Danish electricity company Vindstød, and we negotiated a deal. If we could get 500 people to sign up for a new and more climate-friendly electricity product, they would do it!

• Vindstød already buys 100% Danish wind turbine power, and so will the new product. Here they are tied in place, and thus one of the best ways to use the certificates.
• On top of that, 3 øre per KwH (that's about 1.5% of the total electricity price) will go to climate projects in poor countries that are verified and controlled by either Gold Standard or Verified Carbon Standard.
• Last but not least, all customers will be helped to save power and not use it at bad times.

We will do this through the Climaider app, where you can both get challenges to cut down on your overall consumption, but where you will also be able to see live what the CO2 intensity of the electricity grid is. That way, you can make sure you use the power when it's produced primarily from renewable energy rather than coal power. It's both good for the climate and cheaper for you.

Of course, we continuously follow the development of ElOversigt, and when it is possible to switch to green certificates that are bound in time and place, we will of course be the first to switch.

We are both excited and happy about the collaboration and hope that you will be one of the first 500 to sign up and help create a brand new electricity product!

You can already sign up right here in the app. Initially, you'll "just" switch to Vindstød's normal electricity product, but as soon as we reach 500 people, you'll be switched to the new, extra climate-friendly product.