So... if I'm reading this right, people using less electricity/gas will pay less money for their bills?

What's the world coming to?! (I'm heading for the cloakroom, don't worry)

The idea goes back to the concept of Negawatts introduced in the late 1980s - yes these ideas are really old! SSE will save money by producing or buying in less electricity and can therefore provide incentives to customers who help buy or produce less.

Sounds weird but if you consider that price of the electricity includes the cost of buying from other suppliers (at a premium) or paying to increase or maintain capactiy then it does make sense. If SSE budgets for says 1 TWh a month of which it can produce 80% itself and 20% of which it has to buy in from other suppliers (or increase it's own capacity) then it will make money if consumers need less power than budgetted for because not only does it buy less in, it can also sell excess capacity.

Nice to see some utility companies finally picking up on this.

> SSE claimed it supplies a higher proportion of

> renewably-sourced electricity than any other UK supplier

Ecotricity, who supply 100% renewable electricty, might have something to say about that claim.

Last year Austin Energy gave us a $1500 rebate for installing insulation to bring our attic up to 33 and buying a high SEER A/C unit. To spend anyway we wanted. SSE are a bunch of pikers. Or maybe they're just Scottish.

Phil, Ecotricity does sell to the consumer, but currently only 26% of its current energy sold to customers is renewable (as they admit on their website). Scottish & Southern Energy currently owns and operates over 50% of the entire renewable energy sources on the mainland.

Remember, renewables don't just mean wind. They mean thermal (woodchip), hydro, solar, and wind plants. SSE owns a lot of all of them. Sorry, but the article is right.

There is a UK supplier that uses 100% renewables, Good Energy (http://www.good-energy.co.uk/). They supply to residential and commercial customers, We used them at (shameless plug) CondomCity.co.uk to power our servers!