Electricity
Key environmental impacts
The most significant environmental impacts related to electricity purchases are:
- The generation of energy from fossil fuels being responsible for the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions world-wide.
- The electricity generating industry accounting for a significant proportion of such emissions as the large majority of electricity is still produced by the burning of coal or gas
Through buying electricity generated from renewable energy sources (RES) greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced enormously. It is also important to ensure that public purchases lead to a genuine increase in the amount of electricity generated by RES on the market - particularly from non-hydro sources such as wind and solar power.
Electricity purchases
The Procura+ criteria for green electricity cover a number of aspects:
- Compliance with the EU definition of renewable energy sources (RES) – as defined in Directive2001/77/EC.
- Preference for non-hydro RES– given the local environmental concerns relating to hydro schemes, and the quantity of existing large hydro plants, the Procura+ criteria encourage alternative RES.
- Additionality – to further encourage the construction of new RES capacity the Procura+ criteria require a certain portion of the delivered electricity to come from “new” plants.
To download the Product sheet for electricity click here [pdf-file]
To download the detailed guidance for electricity click here [pdf-file]