Ikea has announced it plans to join the "Big Clean Switch" campaign in an effort to reduce household energy costs and promote renewable energy.
The collective switch scheme sees households pool together in order to "bulk-buy" energy, and then share out the costs. This is a cheaper way to purchase energy, but the actual idea and practicalities can leave people shying away from such ideas, regardless of the potential savings.
The Big Clean Switch and Ikea hope that, with Ikea promoting the scheme to their customers, more people will be made aware of the scheme in the first place. The Big Clean Switch is one such collective switch group but they only list tariffs where the supplier can guarantee that 100% of the electricity sold comes from renewable sources, such as solar panels and wind farms.
Interested parties sign up at the website, bigcleanswitch.org/ikea, which then negotiates the prices available to those interested parties. The customers are then given the opportunity to sign up to that deal or not.
Ikea's sustainability manager, Hege Sæbjørnsen, states that "Ikea hope to make switching to renewable electricity simple, accessible and affordable to everyone."
Cedrec's take
The idea of collective switches sounds quite complicated, but it is essentially using the power of majority to get the best deal. It may sound ironic that the more energy you buy, the cheaper the rate, but that is exactly the ideology that collective switches take advantage of in order to provide the best deal for ordinary energy consumers. Collective switches are reporting up to £300 annually saved in the typical UK household.
With that being said, the fact that collective switches are supposed to save money does not mean they will. Traditional tariffs which are based on the energy usage of your home can and have beaten some collective switches on prices. So, as always, shop around!
