Green Gas

Green energy company Good Energy has launched a carbon neutral gas tariff to celebrate the recent signing of the Paris climate change agreement by over 170 nations.

Good Energy’s Green Gas contains 6% biomethane, produced here in the UK from organic matter like leftover cheese, apple cores and potato peels.

‘Emissions from energy are one of the biggest causes of global warming, and the simplest way to cut your footprint is by switching to renewable electricity and carbon neutral gas’, explains Good Energy founder Juliet Davenport OBE. ‘We can all do something to cut our reliance on fossil fuels right now.’

What is ‘green gas’?

Green gas, or biomethane, is produced when organic matter – from the leftovers of your dinner to the waste from cheese production – is processed in an anaerobic digester. These big tanks act like a massive stomach, ‘digesting’ the waste (see pages 06-07).

As it breaks down, the waste releases a gas: methane. This gas is captured, fed into the national gas grid and supplied to your home. This process is called anaerobic digestion, and it’s a way of capturing natural gas without having to dig it out of the ground.

Best of all, because the gas is produced from organic matter that has grown and absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, the same amount of CO2 is released when the gas is burned. This doesn’t break what is known as the carbon balance, meaning we can get gas to cook and heat our homes from the waste we don’t want – without damaging the planet.