When Dale Vince – the owner of green energy company Ecotricity and a major political donor to the Labour Party – recently appealed to Keir Starmer’s government to rethink its commitment to heat pumps, many were left somewhat bemused.
Vince argued that heat pumps will be more expensive to run for many households than gas boilers, and that their roll-out could cause a political backlash, “like ULEZ on steroids”.
Misleading myths about heat pumps
The point about higher running costs for heat pumps is totally misleading – this depends on the cost of electricity, the efficiency of the heat pump installation, home insulation, etc. But heat pumps are usually more efficient than gas boilers; and so even allowing for the current higher cost of electricity compared to gas, they usually achieve cost parity. Moreover, Octopus Energy and Ovo Energy (competitors with Ecotricity) offer bespoke cheap tariffs for heat pump users, further reducing bills.
Comparing government support for heat pumps to London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) isn’t a particularly good argument against it either. ULEZ is not only highly effective at reducing air pollution, but is broadly supported by Londoners and did no clear electoral damage, with Sadiq Khan increasing his majority in the 2024 mayoral election. Perhaps if one wishes to understand Vince’s comments, one should ask where his material interests lie.
Leading figure in renewable energy
In fairness, Vince has been a leading figure in pioneering renewable energy in the UK, in addition to an electric vehicle charging network, and his environmental credentials are not unmerited.
He’s a keen advocate of veganism, has called for raising corporation tax and urged the government to end its arms sales to Israel; he seems like a decent man.
But the success of Ecotricity, however noble Vince’s intentions were when he started the company in the mid-1990s, has brought him substantial wealth and increasing influence. Such wealth and power are almost definitionally incompatible with environmental sustainability and the common good, and tend to corrupt those who attain them, potentially eroding their sense of compassion and empathy.
We ought therefore to default towards scepticism regarding Vince’s motivations and take some of his views with a pinch of salt.
Biogas is problematic
For instance, when it comes to his criticism of heat pumps, Vince has argued that UK homes should instead keep their existing gas boilers, and that we should be developing biogas capacity. Conveniently, Ecotricity is heavily invested in biogas.
Biogas in general is environmentally problematic for several reasons, but Ecotricity’s plans are utterly bonkers. The company’s ‘Green Gas’ plan aspires to use almost 6.5 million hectares of land in the UK to grow grass to feed into biodigesters which produce supposedly carbon-neutral methane. For context, that’s more than a quarter of the entire land area of the UK, and more than the entire arable area.
Ecotricity argues that the land it has identified for biogas production isn’t of high agricultural quality and therefore wouldn’t overlap much with food production. But it will mean precious little space for anything else.
These areas of land, currently mostly under livestock grazing, could become core areas of ecosystem restoration in the UK, kick-starting biodiversity recovery and storing vast quantities of carbon into the bargain.
Removing the livestock only to use that land for biogas production instead of regenerating rainforests would be profligate to the point of lunacy. Vince has been repeatedly challenged (for instance, by George Monbiot), to account for these enormous carbon and ecological opportunity costs of Ecotricity’s biogas plans, but has never attempted to do so.
Bewildering election campaigning
Another of Vince’s seemingly bewildering political interventions of late was his decision during the general election campaign to go to constituencies where Green Party candidates were leading in polls, such as Bristol Central and Brighton Pavilion, in order to campaign for Labour.
This made no sense whatsoever; in all four of the Greens’ target seats (subsequently all won), the contest was either between the Greens and Labour or between the Greens and the Tories. There was no good reason for a professed environmentalist to campaign for Labour instead of the Greens in these seats, which caused much speculation about Vince’s motives.
Perhaps Vince is expecting a peerage from Starmer, as many have suggested, including his estranged wife. Or perhaps there were also more mercenary calculations in play. The Green Party manifesto, for instance, emphasised a commitment to increase community-owned renewable energy projects, backed by regional investment banks and with minimum thresholds for community ownership of renewables infrastructure. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the owner of a private clean energy company like Ecotricity would be somewhat hostile to this idea. This is purely speculation, but I’ve yet to see a better explanation.
Green capitalism?
Ultimately, what we should learn from Dale Vince, either via his misinformation about heat pumps – which for practical purposes is a gift to the fossil fuel industry – or his ecologically catastrophic biogas plan, or his campaigning against the Green Party, is that there’s no such thing as a truly green capitalist.
It’s great that Ecotricity is supplying renewable energy (although it also currently supplies fossil gas), but the point of the company isn’t to save the planet – it’s to generate profit.
When it comes down to a choice between the best environmental policy and Ecotricity’s commercial interests, Vince always seems to prioritise his company profits; he’d be a poor businessman if he did otherwise. Environmentalists, and the government, would do well to bear that in mind.
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