A rule of thumb for living in the Irish capital is that most activities are, unless you’re a government minister, about 20-25% more awkward than they should be. Making token gestures at environmental friendly behavior is no exception. Public transport is shambolic, so you fume at a bus stop or (eventually) take the car. Bottle banks seem to be emptied every six months, so they degenerate into ad-hoc landfills. And even something as apparently pain-free as using the Web to shrink your Yeti-sized carbon footprint can be problematic.
Airtricity is a Irish-based company–a subsidiary of NTR (the people who brought you the West-Link bridge)–that “generates its electricity entirely from natural resources, such as the wind, so there are no harmful emissions.” The company has launched a campaign designed to attract new customers by guaranteeing a freeze in energy prizes until 2010.
However, further delving reveals that this offer is open only to business customers. OK, you think, the offer to residential users seems to promise bills no higher than ESB’s (I think that’s what the phrase “at current EBS tariffs” means). So the same cost but for electricity generated from renewal sources–a no-brainer, right? Where do I sign up?
Well, it’s not as simple as filling out an online form and clicking the submit button. You have to download a form (in irritating PDF format), print it, and then post it to Airtricity. Geddit? You have to make the effort to give the company your money.
However, if that were not hurdle enough for the dilettante environmentalist, the form you download is actually the same one companies are expected to use.
By this stage, most sane people would have given up the ghost. However, despite what experience has taught me, I sent an e-mail to Airtricity asking how were residential customers expected to sign up using the form intended for commercial customers?
No reply, of course. Not even a boilerplate acknowledgement.
It seems that if this is the effort competitors make to poach customers, ESB won’t be forced to raise its game by much. As for the future of renewal energy in Ireland…
See http://www.airtricity.com if you think I’m exaggerating…