London Mayor Launches Renewables Only Energy Utility

• London Mayor Sadiq Khan has launched a renewable energy utility for the city which will draw all its power from solar, wind and water
• The new utility has Octopus Energy as supplying its customer service for the consumers
• London Power allows consumers to easily switch over to its energy supply and offer fixed tariffs during the contract period
• Another initiative from Octopus Energy's Co-Op Energy has the latter offering a community energy tariff to be sourced completely from renewable energy community projects in the country

The Mayor of London city, Sadiq Khan has announced the launch of a new renewable energy focused utility that will sell power generated from wind, solar and water to Londoners. Called London Power, the utility will have customer service provided by Octopus Energy, a British renewable electricity and gas supplier.

London Power allows electricity consumers in the city to seamlessly switch over to its power supply—in precisely two minutes since it requires no engineer or installer visits or informing the old energy supplier. The utility offers a competitively priced 12-month fixed tariff and claims it to be within the cheapest 10% of similar tariffs available in the market. There will be no exit fees either.

London Power will focus on consumers whose contract for a specific plan has finished to protect them from unfair price hikes. Profits will be reinvested into community projects.

Mayor Khan himself along with over 1,000 Londoners have registered their interest with the new utility.

Calling it a 'fair, affordable, green energy company especially designed for Londoners', Khan explained, "It is a disgrace that many Londoners pay too much to heat and light their homes, with more than a million living in fuel poverty. That's why I've launched London Power – to give all Londoners access to a better, fairer deal safe in the knowledge that they won't be automatically switched to a rip-off tariff when their contract ends."

While stating Nottingham as the first British city to launch its own green energy company called Robin Hood Energy, Reuters says the move by the City of London follows into the footsteps of Barcelona in Spain, Basel in Switzerland and Burlington in the US. Even Queensland state in Australia has launched its own 100% renewables focused energy utility called CleanCo (see Dr Maia Schweizer CleanCo's First Permanent CEO).

By the year 2050, London will strive to become a zero-carbon city aligned with the national goal, and solar's contribution will be 1 GW by 2030 and 2 GW by 2050 (see London Expands Solar Scheme).

Octopus Energy's Co-Op Energy, which operates in the UK, has simultaneously launched a Community Power Tariff to supply 100% renewable energy to be sourced from community projects in the country which local media says will come from 90 local renewable energy generation projects.