Switching on to green tariffs for electric and gas

I've been doing a bit of research on "Green energy tariffs" provided by utility energy suppliers, as they always sounded a bit suspect to me. The idea is that you pay a little more for your energy which offsets your carbon foot print for the gas and electricity that you use as well as investment in to renewable energy generation.


Now I'm all up for being eco friendly and I think we do our bit in our house for the environment and importantly doing our best to keep our energy bills as low as possible, so I wanted to see how much our energy would be on an eco friendly  "green tariff" I found it hard to believe that if I switched to a green tariff it would cost us an massive £136 per year which works out to be 21%. 


I found a great site about our carbon footprint simply called carbonfootprint.com to do some calculations on the energy we use, Now the total energy that we use causes a carbon footprint of 1.43 tonnes of CO2 per year, I then looked at what I'd have to do to 'offset' this energy use (you can see the results here) and I was stunned to find that I could offset our use by donating between £9.98 - £28.52, I know there is more to green energy than just the offsetting but even if I double or triple that, what I could spend through carbonfootprint.com to 'give back' to the environment I'd still be saving money!


Surely if sourcing energy from green and renewable sources utility companies should be providing and working to that goal anyway and not charging the consumer more.
So I've decided I'm going to stay on the tariff I'm currently on and pay to have some trees planted every year so I know where my money is going also this helps wildlife too. This is of course just my opinion and results based on my home.


Paul