New poll reveals one in two support renationalisation
The latest YouGov poll has shown 50 per cent of the public are in favour of nationalising the water industry.
The poll of 1,598 adults on 7 & 8 November also revealed 45 per cent agree with taking the gas and electricity sector back into public hands.
The Sunday Times revealed selected answers to the poll, which showed strongest support for nationalising the railways, at 56 per cent.
The survey found that 39 per cent of respondents believed a Conservative win was likely to usher in a recession over the next few years, compared to 57 per cent for a Labour triumph.
Swedish energy giant Vattenfall ready to pull plug on Britain
Sweden’s state-owned power company is considering quitting the British household energy market after only two and a half years, describing it as a “mess”.
Vattenfall entered the market in June 2017 when it bought iSupply Energy, a Bournemouth-based business with about 120,000 household customers. However, Magnus Hall, Vattenfall’s chief executive, said that the market had proved to be “very difficult” because of strong competition and a government-imposed price cap. He said that the utility was considering “how we deal with it” and that one option would be “to potentially divest”.
Vattenfall employs 20,000 people and makes annual profits of nearly £1 billion from operations in Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Britain. Its interests span power generation to retailing and it supplies electricity to about 6.5 million homes in Europe and gas to about 2.4 million.
Mr Hall, 60, said that the Swedish group, whose main interests in Britain are in wind farms, had been surprised by “the speed of the development in the wrong direction” since 2017. “It is a very difficult market right now, with the cap and a lot of customers changing suppliers and disruption in terms of suppliers going bankrupt. It is quite the mess at the moment. There is absolutely a difficulty in earning money in this market right now as a retailer.” The most recent published accounts of iSupply Energy show it fell to a £17 million loss for 2018.
Mr Hall said that Vattenfall was still planning significant expansion elsewhere in the UK energy sector, mostly in offshore wind.
The Times
National Grid feels profits squeeze
National Grid is set to reveal a dip in profits when it reports half-year results on Thursday, as the threat of nationalisation hangs over it.
Analysts expect the operator of gas and power transmission networks to post underlying pre-tax profits of £748m for the six months to the end of September, against £816m for the same period last year.
The profit slide comes after August’s power cut, which knocked out 5% of the country’s power supply and caused blackouts. Two large power generators — the Hornsea wind farm off the Yorkshire coast and the Little Barford gas-fired power plant in Bedfordshire — failed simultaneously, leaving millions of commuters stranded on trains and at railway stations.
National Grid’s share price closed at 889.9p on Friday, giving it a market valuation of £31bn.
Sunday Times
Review launched into onshore impact of offshore wind farms
The energy minister is to launch a review into the impact wind farms have onshore amid claims the countryside is being “concreted over” with substations and cable corridors built as supporting infrastructure.
The move has been welcomed by campaigners who have been fighting proposals in the East of England to build substations and cable trenches “the size of Wembley stadium” to get electricity from wind farms to the National Grid.
The activists are urging energy companies and the National Grid to develop an “offshore ring main” where the wind farms come online at the coast rather than inland.
Andrea Leadsom, the secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy, has announced the review after meeting a delegation of MPs from Suffolk and Norfolk last month.
George Freeman, who is standing again to be Conservative MP for Mid Norfolk, has written to campaigners explaining how the review would analyse the environmental impact caused by a network of cable trenches and substations, as well as the possibility of an alternative offshore ring main.
He wrote: “We will be able (after the election) to look properly at the overall environmental implications for the offshore and onshore wind infrastructure as a whole.
“Norfolk and Suffolk has some of the most beautiful, valued and recognised wetland and onshore coastal habitats. It would be madness to damage these special environments by bringing renewable energy onshore in an environmentally damaging way.”
Sunday Telegraph
Energy sector woes ‘just tip of the iceberg’ as record 28 suppliers collapse in 18 months
At least 28 electricity companies have gone bust since the start of 2018, a substantially higher number than previously thought, as rising wholesale costs and renewable power commitments squeeze smaller suppliers.
A record 19 electricity suppliers went under in 2018 – with a further nine collapsing in the first half of this year, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Earlier reports suggested that just over a dozen energy suppliers had gone bust in the past 18 months, but this new data shows the real number to be much higher.
The figure points to a wider industry issue, according to the tax firm Price Bailey.
Paul Pittman, partner at Price Bailey, who first obtained the data, said: “The collapse of retail energy suppliers is sending shockwaves through the supply chain, pushing suppliers to those businesses into insolvency.”
In October, Toto Energy collapsed, leaving 134,000 customers without a supplier. A number of other large firms – used by hundreds of thousands of households around the UK – have gone bust in the past 18 months.
The disappearance of these retail suppliers is having a knock-on effect that is damaging companies along the supply chain, including electric power brokers and operators of electricity and transmission capacity exchanges for electric power.
“These figures lay bare the scale of the problem and show that the most high-profile insolvencies in the energy sector are just the tip of the iceberg,” Mr Pittman said.
While the challenges of businesses supplying electricity directly to UK households have received significant attention, the turmoil lower down the supply chain among smaller companies who are owed money by the bigger retailers, has been largely overlooked.
According to Price Bailey, which is acting on the Solarplicity insolvency that left 8,000 customers without a supplier, small energy retailers are being hit by rising wholesale costs, the energy price cap and their renewable power obligations.
The renewable power obligations are particularly difficult to live with, the company said, because if one supplier collapses, the cost of their unmet obligations is distributed across the rest of the market, leading to higher costs and a greater risk of further bankruptcies.
Daily Telegraph
Questions raised over UK’s state-backed fund for electric car charging
The private equity firm appointed by the government to manage as much as £400m in investment in electric car charging points has awarded millions of pounds to a company in which it holds a controlling financial interest.
Zouk Capital is the largest shareholder in charge point builder Instavolt, having made an £18m investment in the company. Now Zouk has chosen Instavolt as the charge point fund’s first beneficiary, a decision criticised by the Labour party.
The Conservative government announced its intention to establish a charging infrastructure investment fund in the autumn budget of 2017, amid plans to encourage drivers to choose electric cars, which emit lower or zero carbon dioxide . The £400m government-backed fund initially aims to deliver 3,000 additional rapid-charge points for electric cars, more than doubling the number of electric car charging points in the UK.
However, the fund’s rollout, which hoped to match £200m in private-sector investment with public money, was delayed by almost two years, amid difficulties in recruiting an investment manager.
The government finally awarded the mandate to manage the fund to Zouk Capitalin September. It also announced that the fund had raised the first £70m, with half provided by the government and half coming from Abu Dhabi-based renewables investor Masdar.
Zouk declined to say exactly how much of the first £70m had gone to Instavolt. However, Samer Salty, Zouk’s founder and managing partner, said it was “less than 50%”. Salty expects to invest more of the fund into other companies by the end of the year.
A spokesperson for the The Infrastructure and Projects Authority, the government body in charge of major investments, said: “Instavolt has ambitious plans for rolling out well-needed rapid chargers across the UK, and has a strong track record in this.
“The government has followed a transparent and due process in the selection of its fund manager for the charging infrastructure investment fund, and all investment decisions have been taken in line with industry best practice.”
In payment for managing the fund, Zouk will receive a percentage of the assets under management, plus a significantly higher performance fee if the returns beat a benchmark. Salty declined to comment on the fees charged, but said it was lower than the “2% and 20%” model – 2% of the assets under management and 20% of the profits – common in the private equity and hedge fund industries.
Zouk will wait for at least five years before trying to recoup its equity investment in Instavolt, either by finding a buyer or floating it on a stock market, Salty said.
The Guardian
Cornish homes take part in trial to supply clean power to grid
Hundreds of homes and businesses in Cornwall have started selling electricity to their local energy network and the national energy system in a pioneering move.
The trial is the first time that traditional energy users – such as homes, hotels and businesses – have acted as suppliers in a microcosm of a full energy system.
The trial harnessed together 100 Cornish homes, fitted with batteries and solar panels, to act as a mini virtual power plant for the local energy network, Western Power Distribution, and the UK’s energy system operator, National Grid. During sunny spells when homes generate more than enough electricity from solar panels they can store the power to use later, or supply the energy system with clean extra power.
The homes took part in the trial alongside 150 local businesses, which were prepared to adjust how much energy they used depending on the balance of energy supply and demand on the grid. If wind and solar power output dropped the companies could choose to use less electricity in exchange for a payment from National Grid, or if the local grid had more electricity than it needed the companies could ramp up their energy demand.
National Grid already offers to pay firms that own utility-scale batteries to provide a similar service, but the trial is the first time that companies can take part in the same “local energy market” as the network operator. The market was designed by energy giant Centrica and modelled on the same system used to balance energy markets across Europe. The energy companies believe the trial could help create a nationwide chain of flexible smart grids built around clean energy.
The Guardian
The flood hound on the front line of the war against water waste
After being fined for losing 150m gallons a day, Thames Water has turned to a dog with a nose for leaky pipes. Stephen Bleach follows the lead
Thames Water has a plumbing problem. Last year the UK’s largest water company mislaid about 150m gallons of the stuff every day. That’s roughly 250 Olympic swimming pools of leakage, merrily gushing out of mains pipes from London to Banbury.
It also has the solution. His name is Snipe. He is a three-year-old sprocker (that’s a cross between a springer and a cocker spaniel) and as he stares excitedly over a field outside Didcot, Oxfordshire, his tail has the jaunty wag of a pooch who’s equal to the challenge. If any of those swimming pools are round here, Snipe clearly reckons he’s the dog to find them.
Canine detection is Thames Water’s latest leak-reduction wheeze and it might not be as barking as it sounds. Mains drinking water contains chlorine, added to kill bacteria, at about one part per million. Dogs, which have up to 300m olfactory receptors, can detect concentrations as low as one part per trillion. Snipe has been trained to pick out tap water’s distinctive pong: once it’s found, the presence of chlorine can be confirmed with a field testing kit. The spot is marked and Thames can return with the diggers.
Using a smartphone loaded with the company’s piping maps, Snipe’s handler, Ross Stephenson, scopes out the path of a 9in iron pipe running a couple of yards under our feet. Then with a gentle sweep of his hand and a “Seek on!” he sends Snipe across the freshly ploughed field, nose snuffling and tail wagging furiously.
Sunday Times
Energy suppliers dangle savings of up to £280 if you fit a smart meter
Energy companies under government pressure to install smart meters in every home are offering big discounts for customers to switch from “dumb” meters.
Smart meters take automatic gas and electricity readings and transmit them directly to suppliers. Ministers say they put an end to estimated readings and save consumers money.
However, the shambolic £13bn rollout, plagued by technical delays and cost overruns, has led to the deadline for installations being extended from the end of 2020 until 2024. Now, in a bid to overcome consumers’ resistance, suppliers are offering massive discounts if you agree to install one.
Analysis carried out for Money of smart meter tariffs shows the potential savings now being touted by the top six suppliers — British Gas, Eon, EDF, Npower, Scottish Power and SSE — as they try to get users to install meters.
On British Gas’s smart meter tariff, you can get an annual £897 deal, compared with its cheapest non-smart tariff of £1,177, saving £280. Prices assume a household with medium consumption on a dual-fuel tariff, paying by monthly direct debit.
With Eon, you can get a deal averaging £905 a year, and EDF £908 (both compared with £1,177). Scottish Power offers £895 instead of £1,178. Smaller savings are available with Npower (£1,128 rather than £1,157) and SSE (£1,164 instead of £1,178).
Will Owen, energy expert at uSwitch, the comparison site that carried out the research, said the smart meter prices are among the lowest offered by the big suppliers since 2016.
“The lowest-priced tariffs do have smart-meter requirements,” he said. “Some require the property to have a smart meter installed; others require customers to agree to be contacted about installation. Many of the cheapest deals can be switched to straight away if you already have a smart meter.”
Sunday Times