Monitoring, surveillance and empowerment - Environmental Reform in the Information Age - page 124

Electricity labelling and certification schemes are a form of energy
monitoring in the category of countersurveillance. Energy companies
are 'forced' to disclose the energy sources they rely on, how energy/
electricity is produced and how labelling takes place. In an increas-
ing number of labelling schemes, consumers can chose different kinds
of electricity, and independent parties verify whether demand in, for
instance, green electricity matches production. In the EU, a system of
green certificates was developed to secure that the amount of green elec-
tricity produced matches the demand and consumption levels, result-
ing in a market for these certificates. 9 Often (e.g., in Switzerland,
some U.S. states, Austria), electricity companies also have to publish
information on their electricity generation portfolio regularly in uni-
form standards and through multiple channels (Markard et al., 2003 ).
As such consumers are provided information on what is happening
at the producer's side. Especially through NGOs, a form of counter-
surveillance is built into the energy system. 10

Global Action Plan for the Earth: ecoteams

In the early 1990s, David Gershon founded Global Action Plan for the
Earth (GAP), the NGO that has developed and promotes the ecoteam
program. At the core of the ecoteam program is the belief that con-
sumers are willing to change behaviour but have insufficient knowledge
on the environmental impacts of their own and of alternative consump-
tion practices. By self-monitoring of consumption (for example, water
and electricity use, waste production, products, mobility), comparing

9

This leads to a further deterritorialisation of environmental flows. In the
trading of these certificates, green electricity is completely delinked from its
localised consumption, embedding it completely in the space of flow. Green
electricity flows are no longer relevant for producers and consumers, but only
the flow of certificates, or virtual green electricity. Although in the end green
electricity certificates have to relate to grounded electricity production
practices, and verification and audit schemes have to guarantee that, the
localities of green production and green consumption can no longer be related
to each other.

10

NGOs are particularly active in reviewing electricity producers and distributors
with respect to their environmental claims. The World Wide Fund for Nature
(WWF), for instance, performs independent audits of green electricity schemes
and Energy Watch in the United Kingdom has a similar function. In addition,
various independent Web sites have made the electricity market more
transparent and helped as such citizen-consumers to influence providers.