Apples

Apples. There’s a lot of them about at the moment, but where do you buy yours? Do you buy them from the “Big Five” – Asda, Morrisons, Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose? Or do you shop at your small local shop or do you perhaps collect your apples from your neighbour with plenty and make a donation in the “honesty box”? Strangely apples and electricity are not that different. It seems the idea of local produce,
Like apples, electricity can be purchased from the “Big Six” – British Gas, E.On, EDF, NPower, Scottish and Southern and Scottish Power, but unlike apples, there are very few other “local” suppliers of electricity and certainly no equivalent to the apple “honesty box” with your neighbour.
The Big Six would like us to believe that it is the green taxes and line charges (and even the wholesale price of electricity) that push up the price of electricity, but largely the Big Six can repeatedly increase their charges to consumers because there is
The Government is seeking to address the problem of rising electricity bills, not by increasing competition, but by reducing the green tax component of electricity bills. The green taxes represent 10% of a typical bill and to remove even some of this support for green energy approaches will impact on the development of a sustainable electricity system and impact adversely on those in fuel poverty, since some of the green taxes, through the ECO program, go to support energy efficiency programs in vulnerable households.
Local energy markets would empower local people not only to generate their own