Green Electricity… Are you being conned?

What should I do?' Working for the Ecologist, it's a question I regularly get from my friends. 'Should I buy organic apples from the supermarket, or non-organic ones from my local greengrocer?'; 'If there are problems with Esso, Shell and BP, which petrol station should I fill my car up at?'; 'Is it worse to drive to the Alps for a skiing holiday, or to fly to Spain to stay in an eco-lodge?'

These are all questions with no simple answers. So I was relieved a couple of months back when a friend asked what I thought was for once an easy one. He was fed up being bothered by people telephoning on a Sunday to try to sell him electricity. Having read a few copies of the magazine that I keep shoving in his hands whenever I visit, he wondered if there wasn't perhaps a green option.

I told him that for four years now I'd been with a company called Good Energy (it was known as Unit-E when I joined), and that it supplied me with 100 per cent renewable electricity.

He seemed impressed: 'That must have been a lot of work.'

'What do you mean?' I replied, incredulous. 'I just phoned up, they sent me a direct debit form, I filled it in and that was it. Easy.'

'So how is your...

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