![\"Green](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/green-electricity.jpg\")
If you take things to extremes, there is very little in the modern world that is purely vegan. When you start to delve deeply enough, almost everything you can imagine contravenes the strictest principles of veganism.<\/p>\nIf you take things to extremes, there is very little in the modern world that is purely vegan. When you start to delve deeply enough, almost everything you can imagine contravenes the strictest principles of veganism.<\/p>\n
Some items contain some animal products (for example,\u00a0chocolate<\/a>); some have utilised animals products during their production (for example, a lot of beer<\/a> has been filtered using the swim bladders of fish); some have been tested on animals, either during their development or the end products themselves (for example,\u00a0medicines<\/a> in the UK must have been test on animals); some have been grown in animal remains or manure (a good deal of organic food<\/a> has been grown in bone meal, fish meal or manure).<\/p>\n As such, it should really come as no great surprise that most gas and electricity providers are not 100% vegan. Here we will explain why that is the case and whether it is possible to purchase your electricity from a vegan-friendly energy supplier (hint: yes, it is!)<\/em>.<\/p>\n The reasons Ecotricity give to back up their vegan credentials are that:<\/p>\n The main reason Ecotricity suggest they are vegan friendly whereas other producers of green energy are not is that others use some kind of animal product or other when producing their energy. These can include animal manure, slurry, poultry litter and other so-called waste products that are derived from animals.<\/p>\n From an environmental perspective, there is also a strong argument to suggest that while the manure is being produced, it makes sense to use the gas from it to produce energy rather than simply letting it escape into the atmosphere. Given that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide when it is first released into the atmosphere, it might as well be burned to create energy that would otherwise have to come from a different source that is potentially even more harmful to animals in the long term.<\/p>\n Of course vegans would argue that there shouldn\u2019t be animals on farms producing the manure and slurry in the first place and so it\u2019s wrong to use it for any purpose. But when some of the alternatives are likely to have devastating effect on the environment, a pragmatic approach might be worth employing. This can be viewed in the same way as the fact that many vegans choose to keep companion animals<\/a>: it is making the best of a bad but pre-existing situation.<\/p>\n Every vegan draws their own lines when it comes to how far along the spectrum of veganism they want to go. And, as we shall see below, there are arguments that call into question the vegan credentials of just about every method of energy production you can think of.<\/p>\n Before we assess the various methods of energy production for whether or not they adhere to veganism, we\u2019ll take a glance at where our energy comes from.<\/p>\n The vast majority of home energy needs in the UK are satisfied by providers of gas and electricity, with a small number of homes relying on solid fuels or some kind of oil (or oil product) for heating or cooking. As the majority of the gas used in the UK is naturally occurring, there isn\u2019t too much to say about it from a vegan point of view, though some may suggest it falls down on that front (see below). Electricity production, meanwhile, is a lot more varied and gives us a little more to get our teeth into.<\/p>\n The UK consumes around 350 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity each year. A single terawatt hour is equal to 1,000,000,000 (one billion) kilowatt hours (kWh). To put that in context, a single kilowatt hour is the amount of energy consumed by a 1000 watt electric heater in an hour. Or about the same as 16 hours of manual labour undertaken by a healthy adult labourer.<\/p>\nVegan-Friendly Electricity Providers<\/h2>\n
![\"Wind](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/wind-turbines.jpg\")
![\"Ecotricity\"](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/ecotricity.jpg\")
<\/a>In fact, before we get our claws into the prickly subject of energy production, let\u2019s cut straight to the chase. While we expect this to change, at the time of writing, there is just one energy supplier in the UK that has been officially verified as supplying 100% vegan electricity by the Vegan Society: Ecotricity<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
Providers Who Are Almost Vegan<\/h3>\n
![\"Bulb](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/almost-vegan-electricity.jpg\")
In the world of veganism, and life in general for that matter, issues are rarely black or white. The likes of Bulb<\/a> and Octopus Energy<\/a>, among an increasing number of others, produce 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. Where they fall down in the eyes of some vegans is that they use animal manure in the production of energy. But as Bulb state in a blog post<\/a> they write about the issue, while they use animal manure, so do farmers who produce a lot of the organic fruit and vegetables that vegans tuck into on a daily basis.<\/p>\nHow Is Gas & Electricity Produced in the UK?<\/h2>\n
![\"Natural](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/natural-gas-power-plant-generating-electricity.jpg\")
Electricity Production in the UK<\/h3>\n
How Electricity Was Produced in the UK in 2016 & 2017<\/h4>\n
![\"Solar](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/solar-power-plant.jpg\")
![\"Gas](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/gas-oven-stove.jpg\")
Natural gas is the stuff that comes out of the gas hob when we turn it on, and that is piped into the boilers that heat the water in people\u2019s home. It is also used in gas-fired power stations to produce electricity. According to the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the total gas consumption of the UK in 2017 was 74.3 billion cubic metres, which is the equivalent to the volume of about 30 million Olympic-sized swimming pools, or about 1 million times the volume of the largest ever hot air balloon (the Pacific Flyer, used by Richard Branson and Per Lindstrand to cross the Pacific Ocean in January 1991).<\/p>\n