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This autumn’s energy price hike will be too big for the industry to deal with and require a “massive shift” by the government to slice £1,000 off the bills of the poorest and most vulnerable, Keith Anderson has warned. The Scottish Power chief executive was one of a number of industry bosses giving evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee. He revealed that his company had received 8,000 calls last week alone from customers worried about soaring energy bills.
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As inflation rises it will “flatter shareholder returns” and “in turn question the legitimacy of the sector”, Jonson Cox has warned water companies, as he suggested shareholder returns could grow by 65% over the next three years. The outgoing chair of Ofwat warned that: "We talk about citizen science but I’m sure we will have citizen finance too.”
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Ofgem wants suppliers to ringfence customer credit balances and renewables obligation (RO) payments to try and fix what it calls a “moral hazard” in the energy sector. One industry source told Utility Week they had major concerns about the proposals. They accused the regulator of coming out with "some quite draconian measures on credit balances".
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News of April’s price cap saw a 50% year-on-year increase in activity on price comparison websites (PCWs) in March, the latest data from Electralink has revealed. As a result 174,000 switches were started in March 2022 which is 81% less than March last year but 22% more than February 2022.
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Octopus Energy Generation has launched a platform designed to connect community demand with where landowners can provide land for local wind turbines. Speaking to Utility Week, Octopus’ director of regulation and economics Rachel Fletcher said there are constraints to building new wind capacity that need to be addressed.
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Plans by Northern Powergrid to hit net zero operations by 2040 have been officially verified by the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). The network operator, which serves 3.9 million homes and businesses, worked with consultancy Anthesis to refine and determine its science-based targets to ensure that it will achieve its aim of aligning its business with the Paris Agreement goals to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 °C.
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A single social tariff for financially vulnerable water customers is “even more important” in the context of a wider cost of living crisis, CCW has said. The consumer body is currently working with Defra and the Welsh government to establish how to implement a scheme and what it will look like, with the aim of having it in place for the start of the next price review period in 2025.
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The government’s energy security strategy contained bold new targets on nuclear and offshore wind but critics argue it does little to address immediate concerns. Experts tell David Blackman there are question marks about how the headline targets will be achieved and dismay at opportunities wasted in areas such as onshore wind and energy efficiency.
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The energy minister has hinted that the government is considering a cap on heat network customers’ bills, which Parliament was told have risen by up to 700% recently. However, opposition MPs have called for more immediate relief from spiralling bills for those customers using communal heating systems.
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A “fundamental reassessment” of how energy advice is delivered to consumers needs to take place to meet the scale of the net zero challenge, Citizens Advice has declared. The charity is concerned about a lack of oversight about where energy advice funding is being spent and has called for an integrated approach that would avoid "isolated ad-hoc interventions".
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Ofwat has named David Black as its permanent chief executive after a year in the position in an interim capacity. Black oversaw the PR19 price review, dubbed the toughest the sector has seen, and has been instrumental in tightening financial resilience of water companies.
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Proposals for more frequent settlement of the renewables obligation scheme have been rejected by the government. BEIS said the recent market turmoil, conflicting responses to its consultation on the issue and in some places unclear steers from stakeholders, had informed its decision.
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Industry experts have called for the prioritisation of work to better understand and remove surface water without it entering overburdened sewers as a key challenge of climate change resilience. The chief executive of Thames and Northumbrian Water agree that the sector needs to work harder, and collaborate further on managing surface water.
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