I find this quite hypocritical and possibky unethical in some respects. GetUp actively persued the banks in relation to their behaviour in the Royal Commission, including things like fees for no service and trailing commissions. To me paying hidden kickbacks/commissions (amounting to $120/tonne of abatement) potentially is no better than what the banks have done.
GetUp have used this and other (including referrals to a bank if the news reports are correct) customer subscriptions/hidden payments to fund their efforts. Yes, they do need funds for their campaigns but hidden commissions/subscription kickbacks is one of the reasons why I stopped supporting GetUp as they are not as transparent as those they chose to criticise.
If they fully disclosed that the kickbacks/(trailing?) commissions were for each customer, what it costs the customer indirectly and what GetUp receives financially, one would be able to make an informed decision whether to support their causes.
Some recent direct marketing from AGL is promoting carbon neutral electricity from AGL. The first surprise was the AI in AGL’s marketing does not realise our account is a Solar PV account, with export greater than import. Why pay an extra $1 per day for electricity to feel good when you are already ahead of the curve and delivering a direct offset? The second surprise is the accreditation of carbon neutral is achieved through purchasing offsets. It’s not about maximising low carbon intensity generation, or reducing high intensity generating capacity.
P.S.
Certification of AGL’s carbon neutral electricity comes from Climate Active. Worth further comment, positive or negative depending on how the key parties involved are valued.
Because AGL is uniquely incompetent in their back offce. This year they would have been my cheapest gas provider but I ‘walked’ by them because of past experiences, and based on many internet reviews they have not improved in the 15 years since.
I have dark fears about any kind of offset system. It seems to me that they can be a feelgood clever accounting rather than doing any real good. The most obvious are to do with pollution and habitat removal. According to one expert the single greatest factor in habitat destruction that is putting koalas at risk of extinction in NSW is environmental offset plans.
I would like to see a clear demonstration that any such plan does in fact achieve its objective. So if it aims to make electricity generation carbon neutral and people joining go from causing emissions to neutral then show me the net reduction in emissions produced by the members of this system. One obvious logical problem is that if everybody bought in that would imply zero net emissions from electricity generation in total. Really?
