The smart meter rollout officially begins in the autumn of 2015. This will be several months after an election in which energy prices and policy will have been top of the agenda, and pretty much exactly when a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the energy supply market would be due to report back, if it were launched before the end of this month (odds-on it will be).
If Labour wins the election and the big six are broken up (or if Labour loses, but the CMA orders a break-up anyway), the suppliers will have a choice to make. Sell the retail arm and focus on generation, or play in an increasingly crowded and competitive space for customers? The attraction of the generation play will itself depend on the success of EMR and the capacity auction at the end of this year. If that goes well for the big overseas players that have profitable interests elsewhere in UK energy, such as Iberdrola with its networks and EDF with Hinkley, then their retail arms will begin to look superfluous.
It’s a different play for British Gas, which despite the forays of parent Centrica into retail in North America and its highly profitable upstream business, is still firmly rooted in the UK market. Its current advertising campaign and early smart meter rollout speaks of ambitions to play in the customer service space, and no doubt it would continue to benefit from the might of its once-monopoly brand.
So for all Ed Miliband’s sound and fury, in some ways it really doesn’t matter who wins the 2015 election. For the big six, the world as they know it is ending.