Are you Funding Putin's War via your Energy Bill?

Funding Putin's War via our Energy Bills - Intro

If you are reading this on a mains powered PC or Macintosh in the UK, chancing are you are indirectly funding Putin's War against the Ukraine.The fact is that the UK is heavily dependant on fossil fuel imports a large percentage of which comes from Russia.

Funding Putin's War via our Energy Bills - Coal

UK Government Data released March 2013 show our growing dependence on imports.

In 2012 around 40% of our imported coal came from Russia. We use 96% of this coal in producing electricty.

Based conservatively on current coal prices this would indicate we are pumping around 2 billion pounds a year in to Russia's Economy.

Of course there is no telling how much of this is spent on invading other countries, but some of this amount is bound to trickle down.

Funding Putin's War via our Energy Bills - What can I do?

The quickest and simplest way to avoid funding Russia is to switch to a 100% renewable energy supplier.

Many of the larger supplier have green tariffs but these are not very good, to make sure your energy is 100% renewable, and that you will be funding expansion of the UK renewable infrastructure you should switch to Ecotricity.

For example EDF spend £18 a year on building new  energy sources. Ecotricity spend close to £300 per customer.

The UK renewable capacity is growing, decreasing our dependence of Russian Coal. By choose a company like Ecotricity you can accelerate this trend.

So there is hope. But in order to effect a change it will require 1 or 2 phone calls. Don't put it off do it now, it will take less time than watching an episode of "X Factor" or "Jeeves and Wooster", and could mean that in 15 years time we can tell the then Russian President (probably still Putin) to stick their coal where the sun don't shine.