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So I asked him what the cost of 6346 of his finest KWh would be, if I moved suppliers.
Tappity tap on his calculator - £660 per year. Or £54 more than I'm currently paying with British Gas (Click6 tariff).
Then I asked him what proportion of EDF's energy came from renewable sources.
...[dunno]...
Since they're primarily a nuclear-powered generation company, he could have said they were 80% carbon neutral (which is somewhat disingenuous, but defensible). Instead he started attacking green tariffs on the basis that the electricity through them was probably generated from coal or gas anyway. Seeming to overlook in the process that there are genuinely 100% green tariffs out there, as well as offset tariffs (eg Scottish Power Hydro)
I went on to ask him about EDF nicking Ecotricity's green union flag branding for their "Team Green Britain" campaign.
...[dunno]...
You can read all about that saga here.
Moving swiftly on, I enquired about the level that EDF were proposing to enter the market on Feed-In Tariffs at - ie will they be paying more than the 5p/unit for exported electricity that the Govt is suggesting, once the ROC system is replaced.
...[dunno]...
At this point he tried to leave. Oh no, you don't get away that easily.
Is there any way, I said, that he could convey up the chain internally at EDF that the sound strategic move would be to pay far more than the minimal rate for FITs under the new system because:
a) it'd entice many small-scale power generators (using Solar PV or wind turbines) to EDF and
b) it'd allow EDF to legitimately state that x% of their generation capacity came from renewables
He thrust a Team Great Britain leaflet at me - somewhat missing the earlier point, but saying that my views would be more likely to reach the appropriate people if I joined that group and told them directly. Ho hum, so there's no internal "what did the customers think of your doorstep presentation?" mechanism.
To cut a longer story shorter, we ended up having a chat about the possibility that his kids may have to deal with a world where widespread electricity brownouts occur and we end up mining our own landfill for resources like copper.
I think he's gone home to separate his recycling out properly.
--
simon
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