Contents:

• NGO Views
• What is green electricity?
• What counts as 'environmentally friendly' electricity?
• Labelling
• Disclosure of sources of electricity

NGO Views

Sept 2002: CAN Europe, FoE Europe, Greenpeace and WWF letter to the Energy Council on the disclosure aspects of energy liberalisation

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Green Electricity

• United Kingdom
• Netherlands
• Germany
• Belgium
• Sweden

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'Environmentally friendly' electricity supplies

Solar

• Photovoltaic cells are used to convert sunlight into electricity. This is the most developed form of solar  electric power and production is expanding in Europe. Arrays of PV cells are integrated into buildings, either on the roof or as wall cladding, and are connected to the  electricity grid. Examples in Europe include. United Kingdom, Switzerland , Germany, Netherlands.

More detailed information about PVs in Europe can be found at:
ATLAS website
PV projects through THERMIE programme
• Solar thermal electricity can be created by concentrating the sun's rays through parabolic mirrors to heat water to make steam to drive turbines. There are no commercial stations in Europe at present, but R&D is ongoing.

EU AGORES site (global overview of renewable energy sources)

Wind

• Wind turbines are now a common sight in Europe and wind energy is the fastest growing renewable energy source with Germany, Spain and Denmark being the European leaders. Installed capacity in the European Union is around 10 000 MW.
• Technical information on wind energy An informative and detailed site from the Danish wind turbine manufacturers association with a comprehensive list of links.
• European Wind Energy Association

Wave

• Capturing wave energy and converting it into electricity is not an easy task, but researchers have developed technology to overcome the problems. Three of the pioneering devices are described here.

TAPCHAN or tapered channel
Oscillating water column
The duck

Geothermal

• Goethermal power uses the heat from underground rocks to create steam or uses naturally occuring hot springs and steam vents to make electricity. This is most effective in volcanically active areas. In Europe, Iceland and Italy are the most productive areas of geothermal electricity.

EU AGORES web site

Hydro power

• As the true environmental cost of large-scale hydro schemes has begun to emerge over the last decade (and as potential sites for such plants is all but exhausted in Western Europe) the new hydro plants now being built are much smaller (max 10MW) and much more attuned to the local environment. The Swiss in particular have done a great deal of work on the criteria for 'environmentally friendly' hydro schemes.

Examples of small scale hydro

Biomass

• All organic matter is known as biomass. Producing electricity from biomass involves burning the material to heat water to create steam to turn turbines, just as coal is burned in a conventional power station. However, the biomass, unlike the coal, was recently living and absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere, which is released again on combustion, making electricity from biomass burning just about CO2 neutral.  However, biomass energy involves agriculture, forestry and waste management, and methods of production must be carefully vetted before electricity from biomass burning can be considered green.
1. Energy crops

Crops can be grown specifically for their energy content. The most common way of doing this is through short rotation coppice (SRC) of willow or poplar, which is harvested every 2- 4 years. Care must be taken that the crop is not damaging to the local environment and that the crop does not come from genetically modified sources.
2. Forestry waste

 Waste products from forest management can be used to produce green electricity if the forest is sustainably managed.
3. Agricultural Waste

This includes straw, poultry litter etc and can be considered as green electricity if its production is not damaging to the local environment and it does not encourage intensive agriculture.
4. Gas from Landfill

Municipal waste disposal sites have a high organic content. This organic matter breaks down, releasing methane into the atmosphere. This gas can be captured and used to generate electricity, which in turn releases CO2 into the atmosphere. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2 (60 times), therefore it is possible to consider electricity from landfill gas as being green since it does reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Landfill gas could be considered truly green if it was collected as part of a fully integrated waste management system where the non-organic portion is removed leaving the organic fraction that can be digested and the resulting gas used to generate energy.

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Labelling

However, green electricity comes in many different guises. Some countries are developing  very strict criteria, whilst others take a more lax attitude to what is considered  'green'. With the increasing liberalisation of the energy markets, more confusion will arise as green electricity could be traded across Europe. For instance, German consumers could be sold imported large hydropower while this is excluded from their national green electricity label. Furthermore, there is a threat that utilities will develop their own definition of what is green electricity -including for instance biodegradable urban waste- undermining the credibility of green electricity labels. In this context, there is clearly a need to develop a common European label for Green Electricity, which will set a number of principles and criteria for GE labelling across Europe.

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Disclosure

Sept 2002: A new report, 'Electricity Disclosure in Europe', sponsored by the EU Altener programme takes a detailed look at the issue of electricity labelling in Europe. It also looks at the US experience where costs of implementation of labelling schemes turn out to be minimal. The report is part of a wider project 'Consumer Choice and Carbon consciousness for Electricity' (C4)

If labelling is to be effective, electricity suppliers must disclose the source of their electricity supplies in a clear and consistent way. This is mandatory in some states in the US and there is a real need for legislation in Europe, particularly with the opening up of the electricity markets. However, there  are moves in this direction. In the recent draft of the directive on 'Completing the Internal Energy Market'  COM(2001)125 , you can find the following text (last page section d):

(d) Member States shall ensure that electricity suppliers specify in the bills sent to each final consumer, the composition of the fuel mix used to generate the electricity that is consumed by the final consumers they supply. The relative costs of the different fuels used to generate a unit of electricity supplied to the final consumers shall be specified and the relative importance of each energy source with respect to the production of greenhouse gases.

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