How The Big Clean Switch is taking the power back

Our energy system’s a mess.

Rising energy costs have hit many families hard. In fact, average gas and electricity bills have gone up by £89 – 8.3 per cent in the past year, according to Citizens Advice.

At the same time, as hurricane after hurricane has ravaged the Caribbean and east coast of America, and UK towns and cities suffocate under a blanket of air pollution, the need for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels has never been more apparent.

Our new clean energy campaign aims to help change this. We’ve teamed up with The Big Clean Switch to help readers of The Big Issue switch to a renewable supplier and save money at the same time.

The most common reaction we always hear is: ‘I can’t believe how easy it was’

Many consumers may have always wanted to do their bit for the environment but were held back by the need to watch the pennies. Now there’s a way of doing both.

Like changing banks, some people have been put off from changing their energy supplier or their tariff by the misplaced perception the whole thing is too much hassle.

“Choosing the right tariff for you, then filling in your details with a supplier only takes 10 minutes,” Jon Fletcher, campaign director for The Big Clean Switch explains. “Your new supplier is then obliged to contact the old supplier and sort it out with them, so the most you’ll be asked to provide is updated meter readings. It’s that simple. The most common reaction we always hear is: ‘I can’t believe how easy it was’.”

The average annual saving among consumers who have switched to a clean provider of gas and electricity is £251.

A growing number of people are catching on to the benefits of going clean. The last few years have seen a rapid turn away from the big suppliers, with small and medium suppliers growing from less than one per cent of UK market share in 2011 to just under 17 per cent last year. And clean suppliers are among the leaders of this emerging group.

Run by the social enterprise Ethical Introductions, The Big Clean Switch campaign is working with six renewable energy companies – Bulb, Ecotricity, Good Energy, Tonik, Bristol Energy and Octopus – to offer even more consumers a wider, more transparent set of options.

A campaign is funded using commission from suppliers. This doesn’t affect the tarriffs available, which will always be the same (if not better) than those on the suppliers’ own websites, and a third of the money will come back to The Big Issue to help fund our work.

Prime Minister Theresa May may have returned to her pledge to rein in the Big Six energy firms last week, but a cap doesn’t get round the very real problem of energy source. An energy revolution is now under way. Put off by the volatility of fossil fuels and the need to address climate change, a growing number of energy companies are divesting their oil, coal and gas.

As The Big Clean Switch campaign makes clear, the more people who move their money behind a clean provider, the quicker the UK will be able to move away from polluting energy sources.

Join The Big Issue and The Big Clean Switch to SAVE NOW here!