IT PAYS to switch to green energy - at least in the case of a switch to Airtricity.

Because not only can switching your power to Ireland's leading generators of wind energy help to save the environment, it can lead to real savings in terms of cold, hard cash.

Airtricity can count between 35,000 and 40,000 business customers on its books, with the majority of these operating in the Republic of Ireland (it has about 6,000 Northern Irish customers). And one of the incentives for businesses is the fact that they can avail of savings of up to 10% on their electricity bills, as compared with ESB tariffs.

This 10% will not be available to every commercial entity - for example companies which have a very heavy night-time usage could save around 8%, and very large companies might enjoy savings of only around 6%. But a saving is still a saving, and the majority of standard companies could be saving closer to the possible 10%. And, as an extra incentive, Airtricity is also offering to hold its prices until January 2010 for customers who sign up before 31 March - the perfect way to hedge against rising fuel costs.

It goes without saying that along with the pleasant knowledge that a company's bottom line is better protected is the knowledge that the power that you purchase from Airtricity comes from a reliable and renewable source - wind. Airtricity has to match the power taken from the grid by its customers with its own power, which comes mostly from wind farms in the Republic of Ireland. Another, smaller block of power comes from hydro-electric generation in Scotland (through the Moyle interconnector, down through the North/South interconnector, and into the businesses of Ireland), while a small portion of power comes from "brown or olive" sources, as a form of back-up. So even though the power is not 100% "green", last year Airtricity customers received power that was about 80% green, and the company is confident that this figure will be closer to 90% for this year.

But 2007 will probably prove to be a redletter year for energy in Ireland, with the creation of the Single Energy Market in November (Airtricity is already operating its own SEM by having customers north and south of the border). This will allow the renewable generators in the overall energy pool to make a bigger contribution when possible, thereby allowing the fossil fuel generators to step down production at certain times - which will be better for the whole energy market, and not just for customers of Airtricity.