Do you choose your energy company based on how they generate power?
Around a third of New Zealand's electricity is generated from hydrocarbons.
We all use hydrocarbon generated electricity - regardless of our chosen power company.
Only The Green Power Company buys verfied voluntary carbon stadard credits to help offset CO2 emmissions on your behalf. (dollars that would normally go into the back pocket of your power co.)
Tell me more...
Power companies have been keeping us in the dark. You don't actually need to choose between simple and environmentally friendly power.
If you join Green Power, you'll still get electricity from the same source, use the same meter and receive the same backup if things go wrong. Additionally, Green Power is 100% online so you can save on your carbon footprint for bills and postage.
Sign up (through our Flower Power promotion) and get $50 of free electricity!
Signup through our Tree Power promotion, and we'll plant 400 trees on your behalf.
Green Power is a product from PowerKiwi, a Kiwi owned, independant company.
FAQs
How much bad power do I use?
We all use power from the same grid.
Some argue that there are 'green electron's and 'brown electrons', and that people in the deep South use greener electricty than those in say Auckland. We do not subscribe to this approach, and treat every customer the same way.
A simple way to think about it is if someone in Dunedin switches on a heater at 7pm then the grid needs to supply one heater's worth more supply. That extra supply could come from anywhere in the grid, and may well come from a thermal power station in the North.
In New Zealand around one third of electricty is generated from thermal power, and there are also lower levels of emissions from geothermal power generation - which contributes about 10% of our power.
So about a third of the power you use is 'bad' thermal, while another 10% is renewable but carbon emitting geothermal.
How do you measure my Carbon emissions?
We use the MED reporting to determine just how much carbon emissions per unit that retail users of electricity from the grid use.
The report tells us that it has varied over the last few years from 18 to 23 tonnes of Carbon equivalents per Mega Watt hour, as the Huntly power station switched to using more gas versus coal.
We also add another 8% per unit to more than cover average transmission and distribution losses.
We increase the price of each unit we sell to incorporate the cost of carbon neutralising that unit.
The Clean Energy Guide tells us that the average NZ household uses 8.1 Mega Watt hours a year, or 8100 units. Powershop gives you the ability to more frequently check your consumption, and so quickly understand the impact of use and efficiency changes that you make.
(Source MED Table G4 on the MED pdf)
How do you offset those carbon emissions?
We buy verified voluntary carbon standard credits, which are the de-facto industry standard and largest traded voluntary carbon credits.
We will then 'retire' or cancel those credits at TZ1 Market, New Zealand owned and servicing the world. Retiring the credits as you use your power makes sure that our purchased carbon credits are never used again.