https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/20137904002
Green energy products in the United Kingdom, Germany and Finland
1 Department of Energy Technology, Aalto University, Otakaari 4, 00076 Aalto, Finland
2 Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40014, Finland
a Corresponding author: aira.hast@aalto.fi
Published online: 10 December 2014
In liberalized electricity markets, suppliers are offering several kinds of voluntary green electricity products marketed as environmentally friendly. This paper focuses on the development of these voluntary markets at household level in the UK, Germany and Finland. Since there are already existing renewable energy policies regulating and encouraging the use of renewable energy, it is important to consider whether voluntary products offer real additional benefits above these policies. Problems such as double counting or re-marketing hydropower produced in existing plants are identified. According to our study, the demand varies between countries: in Germany the number of green electricity customers has increased and is also higher than in the UK or Finland. Typically the average additional cost to consumer from buying green electricity product instead of standard electricity product is in the range of 0–5% in all studied countries, although the level of price premium depends on several factors like electricity consumption. Case study of Finland and literature show that the impacts of green energy are not solely environmental. Renewable energy can benefit local public policy.
© Owned by the authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2014
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
