The UK Government recently announced it wanted enough offshore wind farms to power every home in the UK by 2030. But how can households actually play their part? Switching to a ‘green tariff’ may seem the obvious choice, but most green tariffs on the market will do very little to make it happen.
Step in Ripple.
Ripple enables consumers to part own new wind farms and solar parks and have the green, low cost electricity they produce supplied to their homes. It enables people to make a real impact with their energy choice.
Find out more here.
The global shift to zero carbon energy system is well underway and is set to accelerate over the next 10 years. The UK, China, Japan, the EU and South Korea have all set net zero targets. When it rejoins the Paris climate agreement, America will too.
Yet the barriers to ownership of the world’s clean energy assets remain high. Too high for household consumers. Ripple wants to change that.
Until now, consumers had been excluded from owning energy assets, except for expensive, small scale technologies like rooftop solar. It can cost up to £8,000 to install solar on a house, and it’s not a viable option for those who rent, live in flats or plan to move home.
Ripple’s clean energy ownership platform enables everyone to part own large scale, low cost renewable energy assets and have the green, low cost electricity they generate, supplied to their home via the grid.
It’s a simple, flexible and easy way for people to act on climate change and share in the benefits of clean energy ownership direct.
Sarah Merrick, CEO and founder of Ripple, had the idea when she led the wind industry’s strategy group looking at the post-subsidy world. Sarah recalls “The industry was keen to sell their electricity to Google and Facebook. That’s great, but wind had just become the UK’s cheapest source of electricity. I thought it was unfair that big corporates could access the cheapest electricity around, but ordinary household consumers couldn’t. I thought someone would plug the gap in the market, but a year or so went by and still no one had. So I decided to do it myself and set about launching Ripple.”
Ripple launched the first, pilot wind farm in summer 2020. Once operational, it will be the UK’s first wind farm to be owned by the consumers it supplies.
Ripple estimates customers will save around 25% on their electricity bill over the 25 year lifetime of the wind farm, for an upfront cost of £1800, roughly 65% cheaper than the equivalent rooftop solar system.
So far the platform has handled over £1.1m of transactions from more than 500 consumers. Having been selected from over 850 global startups to take part in the Free Electrons program, Ripple is exploring opportunities with ESB in Ireland and Origin in Australia to launch further pilot projects.
According to Bloomberg, $11tr of investment in wind and solar will be required globally by 2050 to meet net zero targets. Ripple is enabling consumers to access the market direct for the first time ever.
Voted Startup of the Year 2019 by both Seedrs investors and Business Green Technology Awards, Ripple is currently fundraising to continue its growth, launch its second project and expand its offering to business customers.
Interested to learn more, take a look at Ripple’s latest campaign on Seedrs.
