Green energy provider Good Energy has this week completed a share offer that is expected to raise £1.6m for investment in the development of several products and services.
Speaking to BusinessGreen, Good Energy chief executive Juliet Davenport said that the funds would be invested in developing a dual fuel offering that will provide customers with both electricity and gas.
"Two-thirds of the UK market is on dual fuel energy tariffs so currently we effectively can't supply that large chunk of the market," she said. "We are investigating how we could develop a green gas and electricity tariff. Obviously, you can't get 'green' gas, so we are looking at how we could put together a package that perhaps used carbon offsets or really incentivised people to use less energy."
She added that the cash would also be used to upgrade one of the company's UK wind farms and launch an online shop offering a range of green energy products and information.
Davenport confirmed that demand for green energy from both business and domestic customers is continuing to soar and dismissed concerns that procuring electricity from renewable sources removes much of the environmental pressure for firms to cut their energy use.
"A lot of people say that you should undertake energy efficiency measures first, but we've found that signing up to green tariffs gets companies thinking about energy and quickly leads to a focus on energy efficiency," she observed. "People start to think about energy as a precious resource, and we're also 10 to 15 per cent more expensive, which we're not worried about because it is a different product to conventional tariffs."
Davenport pointed to the fact that while Good Energy's customer numbers had climbed 18 per cent in the past year, revenue had only climbed four per cent, suggesting that the purchasing of renewable energy does prompt a reduction in energy use.
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