Hackney Council turns from ‘green’ energy to brown

Hackney Town Hall . Photograph: Hackney Citizen

“Everything’s gone green in Hackney,” trumpeted a front page splash in Hackney Today two years ago, celebrating the council’s use of hydroelectric energy. How times have changed.

Last month (May) Councillor Sophie Linden revealed that Hackney Council had reverted to buying ‘brown’ energy – something that appears to have gone unmentioned in the council-run ‘newspaper’.

‘Brown’ energy comes from non-renewables like coal. Cllr Sophie Linden, who is Lead Member for Sustainability, made her comments to a public audience at the Arcola Theatre’s Hackney Environment Network day, defending the policy climbdown by saying that green energy no longer represented best value for taxpayers.

Commenting on Hackney Council’s decision to invest in energy efficiency measures instead of using electricity generated from 100 per cent renewable energy sources, a Friends of the Earth spokesperson said: “It’s disappointing that cost is still a barrier to using green energy – if we are going to tackle climate change, we urgently need to switch to renewable sources of energy as well as reducing energy waste.

“Local councils have a huge role to play in helping people to go green. Their top priority should be to increase the energy efficiency of people’s homes to cut carbon emissions and fuel bills and create local green jobs.

“But councils could also lower their own fuel bills by generating their own renewable energy from systems like solar.”

Purchasing guidelines on the Council’s website state that the procurement of goods and services which have the least environmental impact should be considered where possible. The guidelines also state that efforts should be made towards achieving best value – but they go on to mention the environment no less than four times in this short subsection.

A spokesperson for the Council said the premiums for large-scale hydroelectric power from its energy provider had “increased by 1,000 per cent”, and that the Council would be using the money saved by going back to ‘brown’ energy on energy-efficiency measures in Council-owned buildings.

The Council’s climbdown on green energy comes as previously unpublished documents from the Department of Energy and Climate Change predict that the UK will struggle to meet its target of sourcing 15 per cent of its energy from renewables by 2020.

Letter: Hackney Council was right to axe its eco-energy contract