Good Energy - United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Good Energy is a fast-growing 100% renewable electricity supply company. It currently has more than 51,500 electricity customers, 25,000 gas customers and 76,000 Feed in Tariff (FIT) sites in the United Kingdom. It develops and operates its own wind and solar farms, and has invested in a proposed new tidal energy project in Swansea, South Wales.

Fast facts:

Good Energy plans to make the United Kingdom 100% renewable by 2050;
Good Energy employs 153 women (55% of Good Energy’s workforce) and is committed to creating a working environment that ensures female staff members can progress within the company;
Its male-female employee ratio is 45:55 and several women hold key, senior management positions in the company; and three out of six board members are female.

The problem

The UK energy sector is traditionally male-dominated and is mainly controlled by the ‘Big 6’ (Britain’s six largest energy suppliers). Good Energy’s CEO represents one of only two female CEOs in the UK’s energy industry. Climate change is an energy problem - burning fossil fuels to generate energy accounts for 38.4% of UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The solution

Good Energy mitigates climate change at the source by increasing the use of renewables to help reduce CO2 emissions. Good Energy’s customers’ electricity annual consumption is balanced with 100% renewably sourced electricity. Auditors independently verify their fuel mix each year. Good Energy buys power from a network of 800 smaller generators, creating a marketplace for their renewable energy. Through Feed-in Tariff services they support over 76,000 sites in choosing to generate their own renewable electricity. They develop new sources of renewable electricity generation to replace existing carbon-intensive methods of generation and have invested in creating new renewable generation sites and their total owned generation capacity has risen to 24.2MW (in 2013 it was 9.2MW).

Helping the planet

Good Energy wants to make green energy the obvious choice and it is putting the advancement of renewables at its core. A recent estimate for the average carbon reductions that Good Energy’s work accounted for in 2013 and 2014 was 78,398 tonnes of CO2.

Helping people

Good Energy supports women looking for a career in the energy industry. Their male-female employee ratio is almost equal, and several women hold senior management positions in the company. Three out of Good Energy’s six board members are female. Women lead all their finance, communications, customer care, human resources, business development and sales departments. Good Energy also lends their support to organisations that encourage women in engineering and the sciences.

Scaling Up

Good Energy is promoting the idea of moving away from the ‘Big 6’ to an energy market for everyone, where communities and householders have more control over how they buy, source and use energy. Their activities are scalable and are growing, resulting in a bigger impact on climate change.