Bio-gas first for UK homes

Ecotricity is to offer 'green gas' for the first time to UK homes supplied from renewable sources and cutting waste from landfill.


The company, who say it’s the world’s first green electricity company, will source the green gas, or bio-gas as it’s more formally known, from a composting-like process that breaks down food waste and other material that normally gets dumped straight into landfill.

Britain currently wastes around 18m tonnes of food alone a year, which could produce enough biogas to supply over 700,000 homes.

Ultimately, Ecotricity plans to create bio-gas from emerging next-generation technologies such as special strains of algae, a naturally occurring, fast reproducing and potentially endless source of energy.

Ecotricity will supply gas from a mix of green and conventional ‘brown’ sources, with the green fuel mix increasing as more customers sign up and it builds new renewable supplies, the same model it has used with electricity since it started in 1996.

Ecotricity founder, Dale Vince, said: “We’re the real British Gas now. We’re kickstarting the market to move Britain from brown to green gas, turning people’s gas bills into green gas mills, just as we’ve been doing with windmills for over a decade.

“People can now have complete control of where the money they spend on their energy bills goes, and ultimately where their energy will come from.

“Nobody has to carry on giving their money to the big multinational energy companies, who seem determined to keep burning whatever in the world they can get their hands on like there’s no tomorrow.

“By choosing green gas, customers can help unhook Britain from its addiction to foreign gas supplies, make a positive long-term change to the world we live in, and could also keep thousands of tonnes of waste out of landfill which could even help keep council tax bills down”.

Luke Walsh

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