ActewAGL's Michael Costello holds forth on Greenchoice

JohnK said :

I agree that it’s a stupid scheme unless it actually provides the green electricity to offset people’s usage.

The scheme does actually provides green, renewable, electricity for people’s usage. It’s clearly represented as such by ActewAGL.

To quote: “When you join Greenchoice, you are instructing us to buy a specified amount of renewable energy on your behalf from accredited GreenPower generators.

That energy is fed back into the national electricity grid, replacing the same amount of energy that would have been generated from traditional fossil fuel sources. The result is that your home or business is helping to reduce greenhouse gases being discharged into the atmosphere from the generation of electricity.”

So 100% Greenchoice supplies you with 100% green energy.

But ActewAGL wants charge their 100% Greenchoice customers the carbon tax anyway.

Costello’s dissembling letter displays contempt for his customers.

No, I’m sure that they actually buy the power to put into the national grid, but it isn’t used to offset your individual usage.

As far as I can see, you are still paying the Carbon tax because the energy you individually are using, isn’t Green.

This is the same Michael Costello who orchestrated the 2006 functional review, which led to real gems like school closures, shared services, and the first go at wrecking ACTION’s timetable (plus more).

This used to be sold as “you are buying renewable energy” now sold as “contributing to the use of green energy in the grid by all”.

This should be a simple accounting task and ANY green energy purchased should have ZERO carbon tax added. This will push the tax back to other (non-green) consumers, but isn’t that the point of Carbon Pricing.

Incidentally (and related to his comment on lower GreenChoice premiums) Origin seem to be in a similar bind, but have reduced their prices 3.08c v’s 7.5c (ACTEW) for 100% Greenchoice.

I never signed up (years ago) as most of the energy then was from the Snowy scheme and from burning wood/stuff. It has changed some what so now hydro represents 63.4%, wind 22.9%, bioenergy 11.5%. photovoltaic 2.1%.

I agree that it’s a stupid scheme unless it actually provides the green electricity to offset people’s usage.

The scheme does actually provides green, renewable, electricity for people’s usage. It’s clearly represented as such by ActewAGL.

To quote: “When you join Greenchoice, you are instructing us to buy a specified amount of renewable energy on your behalf from accredited GreenPower generators.

That energy is fed back into the national electricity grid, replacing the same amount of energy that would have been generated from traditional fossil fuel sources. The result is that your home or business is helping to reduce greenhouse gases being discharged into the atmosphere from the generation of electricity.”

So 100% Greenchoice supplies you with 100% green energy.

But ActewAGL wants charge their 100% Greenchoice customers the carbon tax anyway.

Costello’s dissembling letter displays contempt for his customers.

There is a simple thought experiment that blows ACTEW’s whole argument out of the water. First of all you have to suppose that any wholesale Greenchoice energy sourced by ACTEW is purchased by them Carbon tax free (the whole point of Green energy after all).

Now for arguments sake lets say that 100% of customers switched to Greenchoice. Effectively 100% of energy in the ACTEW grid would now be carbon tax free (whether directly or via offsets), and hence ACTEW would have zero carbon tax liability. Yet they would be charging the cost of the carbon tax to 100% of their customers… effectively pocketing the difference and to my mind falling well within the ACCC criteria for deceptive conduct. In this case passing on the price of the carbon tax to consumers when the business itself doesn’t pay anything.

bd84 said :

I still don’t get why people think they shouldn’t have to pay the carbon tax? Are people really that stupid?

If you’re too stupid to fully read what you’re signing up for, then that’s your own damn fault. No point whinging about it, you can always unsubscribe from the service.

Troll!!
No wait…

Pot? (kettle, black).
Hang on…. maybe…

Foot-in-mouth sufferer?

I give up. WHAT are you?

Deref said :

chewy14 said :

Deref said :

No, Michael, it’s not counterintuitive – it’s a scam.

Let me simplify it for you:

You have two customers, Alice and Bob. Alice pays for non-carbon producing electricity, Bob doesn’t. For the sake of illustration, let’s assume that both Alice and Bob use x units of electricity each. You, as the provider, purchase x units of carbon-free electricity (CFE) and x units of carbon-producing electricity (CPE). The electrons all travel down the same wires; there is no distinction. But you charge Alice for the CFE that you bought on her behalf and you charge Bob for the CPE you bought on his behalf.

Why is that hard?

But I didn’t think this was how the program worked.
I thought both Bob and Alice both use and were charged for Carbon producing energy.
Then Alice decided to pay extra for the company to buy some non carbon producing electricity to offset her carbon footprint.
This doesn’t give Alice any rights to the non-carbon producing electricity.

If that’s right, then it’s even more of a scam than I’ve made it out to be. It’s represented as paying extra to source your electricity from CFE sources (i.e. the provider buys CFE electricity to cover your usage; not, as some moron suggested, that you get different electrons).

chewy14 said :

What was the cost of the Greenchoice energy before and after the Carbon tax came in?

If the cost before the carbon tax was y, then it should be y after the carbon tax. There is no carbon tax on CFE.

This, indeed, is the whole idea – that, over time, the price of CPE will rise while the price of CFE will drop (or at least not rise as fast), making CFE closer to and eventually cheaper than CPE.

ACTEWAGL’s scam completely defeats the whole purpose of a carbon tax by eliminating the differentiation.

I’ve never paid the extra so I was interested to know whether the price changed after the carbon tax came in. I agree that it’s a stupid scheme unless it actually provides the green electricity to offset people’s usage.

chewy14 said :

Deref said :

No, Michael, it’s not counterintuitive – it’s a scam.

Let me simplify it for you:

You have two customers, Alice and Bob. Alice pays for non-carbon producing electricity, Bob doesn’t. For the sake of illustration, let’s assume that both Alice and Bob use x units of electricity each. You, as the provider, purchase x units of carbon-free electricity (CFE) and x units of carbon-producing electricity (CPE). The electrons all travel down the same wires; there is no distinction. But you charge Alice for the CFE that you bought on her behalf and you charge Bob for the CPE you bought on his behalf.

Why is that hard?

But I didn’t think this was how the program worked.
I thought both Bob and Alice both use and were charged for Carbon producing energy.
Then Alice decided to pay extra for the company to buy some non carbon producing electricity to offset her carbon footprint.
This doesn’t give Alice any rights to the non-carbon producing electricity.

If that’s right, then it’s even more of a scam than I’ve made it out to be. It’s represented as paying extra to source your electricity from CFE sources (i.e. the provider buys CFE electricity to cover your usage; not, as some moron suggested, that you get different electrons).

chewy14 said :

What was the cost of the Greenchoice energy before and after the Carbon tax came in?

If the cost before the carbon tax was y, then it should be y after the carbon tax. There is no carbon tax on CFE.

This, indeed, is the whole idea – that, over time, the price of CPE will rise while the price of CFE will drop (or at least not rise as fast), making CFE closer to and eventually cheaper than CPE.

ACTEWAGL’s scam completely defeats the whole purpose of a carbon tax by eliminating the differentiation.

Deref said :

No, Michael, it’s not counterintuitive – it’s a scam.

Let me simplify it for you:

You have two customers, Alice and Bob. Alice pays for non-carbon producing electricity, Bob doesn’t. For the sake of illustration, let’s assume that both Alice and Bob use x units of electricity each. You, as the provider, purchase x units of carbon-free electricity (CFE) and x units of carbon-producing electricity (CPE). The electrons all travel down the same wires; there is no distinction. But you charge Alice for the CFE that you bought on her behalf and you charge Bob for the CPE you bought on his behalf.

Why is that hard?

But I didn’t think this was how the program worked.
I thought both Bob and Alice both use and were charged for Carbon producing energy.
Then Alice decided to pay extra for the company to buy some non carbon producing electricity to offset her carbon footprint.
This doesn’t give Alice any rights to the non-carbon producing electricity.

What was the cost of the Greenchoice energy before and after the Carbon tax came in?

No, Michael, it’s not counterintuitive – it’s a scam.

Let me simplify it for you:

You have two customers, Alice and Bob. Alice pays for non-carbon producing electricity, Bob doesn’t. For the sake of illustration, let’s assume that both Alice and Bob use x units of electricity each. You, as the provider, purchase x units of carbon-free electricity (CFE) and x units of carbon-producing electricity (CPE). The electrons all travel down the same wires; there is no distinction. But you charge Alice for the CFE that you bought on her behalf and you charge Bob for the CPE you bought on his behalf.

Why is that hard?

I still don’t get why people think they shouldn’t have to pay the carbon tax? Are people really that stupid?

The scheme is clearly marketed as something to help the environment by paying an amount to allow ACTEW to invest in obtaining electricity from environmentally friendly sources, not that your house will be directly powered from these sources. Power in the electricity grid is just power, no matter where it was sourced from and it is unlikely to be anything different. Therefore you pay Julia’s carbon tax like the rest of us.

If you’re too stupid to fully read what you’re signing up for, then that’s your own damn fault. No point whinging about it, you can always unsubscribe from the service.

Word chaff. Costello doesn’t even try to make sense here.

The issue is that 100% Greenchoice power is represented by ActewAGL to create zero carbon emissions.

Zero carbon emission times the carbon tax equals zero.

The rest is ActewAGL dipping into it’s best customers pockets. And the CEO dissembling about it.

The answer is “a combination of government policy and the structure of the national electricity market.”

Well that’s OK then, please dont bother us with any details, cos we believe you..
100% Green Power from renewable sources, presumably allowing for delivery losses get a Carbon Tax ??