by Simon Lee, published 22 January, 2007 Recently we interviewed the CEOs of two green energy suppliers, Ecotricity and Good Energy, and asked them to explain just how green their energy was. Here they talk about the realities of trying to bring green energy to the mass market; from planning permissions to political interference.

Dale Vince of Ecotricity and Juliet Davenport from Good Energy may disagree on the best way run a successful green energy company, however, they do concur that political interference on both local and national levels is in part responsible for the UK's listless conversion to renewables.

The planning process

Most people love seeing wind turbines. The tall majestic windmills are the icons of clean renewable energy. So why are they so controversial? And why aren't there more of them?

Dale Vince feels the planning system is a major barrier, having had several applications for new wind turbines held up for years he thinks it's 'not fit for purpose.'

'We have a planning system that was designed for big fossil fuel generators. often we go through a process as arduous as if we wanted to build a nuclear power station. We just won one in Norfolk, for just two wind turbines, and it took five years and two public enquiries to win it. What's that all about?'

When I ask if there's much public opposition, he says definitely not.

'That's the crazy thing about it, 80 per cent of people in every opinion poll survey ever undertaken in the UK are for wind energy, including in their own backyard. Wherever we go to try and build a wind turbine there.s massive passive support for what we're doing, and a very small, vociferous opposition.

It takes one man 'literally' to start a pressure group, make an outrageous claim, and he's got a headline, then the newspapers refer to the 'controversial wind application'.

'Planning applications much too often are given to appeal inspectors to decide, because local politicians can't withstand pressure group tactics, they'd rather just roll over and give it to an unelected official. The public overwhelmingly support it, and the planning system overwhelmingly turns it down, until it goes to appeal. That.s what.s holding us up.'

In an attempt to draw attention to the problems the industry is facing, last year Ecotricity attended the party political conferences putting the case across to MPs and ministers with a paper entitled; Why the Planning Process is failing to deliver government renewable energy generation targets. At present the status quo remains.

Despite the obstacles they are gaining approval for 90% of the applications they make. One in ten of the wind projects that operate in the UK today have been planned and built by Ecotricity.

Government interference

You would think the government would be laying down the red carpet and wooing these green entrepreneurs with tax breaks. Unfortunately Juliet Davenport from Good Energy and former advisor to the EU on carbon trading, has found this not to be the case.

Recently she accepted an invitation from Ofgem, the energy market regulator, to sit on its Environmental Committee, but all is not going well.

'I get very frustrated with government bodies, particularly Ofgem, because they perceive their commitment to protect the consumer in terms of price, not the environment. So investing in energy efficiency is fine, because that reduces the customer's price, but investing in renewables in the short term is a problem, because it can be more expensive.

'What they're not looking at is that a lot of people are going to suffer from the environmental impact of climate change, so if you don't start looking at how you're going to make renewables work properly, you're going to impact on consumers in that way. It's trying to get round the ideological shift at that level that's quite hard. Ofgem was quite progressive to begin with, but over recent months it hasn't been as progressive and I've got more and more frustrated.'

And what about businesses?

'I would say about 25% of our sales goes to the business community,' says Juliet. 'We've got some great businesses that are part of what we do. people like Innocent Drinks, they're just fantastic, they.ve looked at sustainability throughout the whole of their business.

'But I think big businesses, rather than just buying green electricity, should be looking at investing in their own renewable generation, because quite often they've got very big sites. What you don't really want them to do is to take all the renewable energy out of the market and then change their minds next year, which can happen. What they should be doing is investing in renewable generation directly themselves, on-site.'

Must try harder

Looking to the future, both Dale and Juliet want to see the government act with environmental taxes, accusing it of political cowardice for not having done so sooner.

Dale says the planning laws are in urgent need of reform, and that bigger structural shifts are needed, like heavy investment in public transport.

Juliet thinks the government is full of good ideas on climate change, but not very good at implementing them.

On individual carbon allowances, the two have mixed feelings. Dale thinks the technology is there, but again, the problem is a lack of political will, whilst Juliet thinks the idea is 'fantastic', but would be technically difficult to implement.

You'd have to get industry involved in delivering it, because governments aren't very good at things like that,' she says.

But both are keen to stress the role of the individual.

'We each have to take personal responsibility for how much of the earth.s resources we're using,' says Dale.

'We're born to take utilities for granted, at the flick of a switch, the turn of a tap, and those times are changing. We're coming out of the times of plenty and we're moving into a different period altogether. We all definitely need to look to what we do personally, we shouldn't just abdicate responsibility to the government. We can all do a great deal in our own lives, in some ways lead by example in our own small spheres.'