Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 28TH JUNE - 4TH JULY 2019 | 3 This week 4 | Seven days 9 Policy & Regulation 9 | News Call for smart meter deadline to be moved 10 | Analysis Can Boris turn blues to green? 12 | Analysis Ofgem plays hardball on competition breaches 13 | Opinion Maria Connolly, TLT 14 | Market view The commercialisation of vehicle-to-grid technology 15 Finance & Investment 15 | News £100m initiative for offshore wind fi rms 18 Operations & Assets 18 | High viz Northumbrian Water's Murton treatment works 19 | Market view Innovative ways to help customers stay out of debt 20 | Roundtable Considering the impacts of localised energy 22 | Awards case study The Western Gas Alliance's Staff Development Award 25 Customers 25 | News Table reveals 'gulf' in customer service 26 | Market view Rushing the smart rollout is destroying public confi dence 27 | Chief executive's view Joanna Elson, Money Advice Trust 28 | Opinion Michael Kalli, Ello Media 30 Community 31 | Disconnector GAS 19 | Market view Customers and debt 22 | Awards case study The Western Gas Alliance's Staff Development Award WATER 18 | High viz Northumbrian Water's Murton treatment works ELECTRICITY 14 | Market view Commercialising V2G technology 15 | News £100m initiative for offshore wind fi rms 20 | Roundtable Considering the impacts of localised energy ENERGY 9 | News Move the smart meter deadline 10 | Analysis Can Boris turn blues to green? 12 | Analysis Ofgem plays hardball on competition breaches 13 | Opinion Maria Connolly, TLT 25 | News Table reveals 'gulf' in customer service 26 | Market view Rushing the smart rollout is destroying public confi dence 27 | Chief executive's view Joanna Elson, Money Advice Trust Leader Jane Gray DOWNLOAD: Reducing bad debt, generating effi ciency and improving the customer journey https://bit.ly/2EbKRH5 See the Community section, page 30 If you are responsible for your company's outsourced or internal customer service centre we can deliver compelling cost savings to your business, with a typical rate for an FTE of just £10 per hour. Synergy operates an established Contact Centre in a modern and thriving part of Durban, South Africa employing experienced and highly educated staff. We already successfully work with a number of UK utilities across a range of services: If you would like to see our operation for yourself we can fly you, at our cost, to South Africa. Here we will give you a full tour of our facilities, a presentation on how we work and access to our professional teams. For further information please contact steve.cripwell@synergyoutsourcingltd.co.uk / 020 7932 4171 or toby.selves@synergyoutsourcingltd.co.uk / 020 7932 4116 Double your successful meter installation rate and halve your costs with MATS - the new Universal SMETS2 Commissioning Mobile App from Cloud KB. It works with all DCC 53 Million Smart Meters by 2020? YOU MUST BE QUACKERS! AN APPSOLUTE MUST Which PM would serve utilities best? The odds have tightened in the Conservative leadership race fol- lowing last week's rumpus in the Johnson-Symonds household, but which candidate represents the best victor for utilities? With decarbonisation now • rmly front and centre of utility strate- gies – across energy and water – the ability of our new premier to advance sensible environmental policy is key. It's no surprise that both Johnson and Hunt recently rediscovered themselves as environmental champions, despite having a mutual history of climate change scepticism, or at least ambivalence if their voting records on key environmental issues are anything to go by. The past year's momentous outpouring of climate concern from academic and government advisory organisations and, not least, the voting public, has caused climate change doubters in politics to fall away like so many miles of Arctic ice shelf. And in any case, by the time the next PM assumes power, the new net zero target for 2050 will have been legislated. The key for utilities, though, is who will act most swi‡ ly and convincingly to create the desperately needed policy frameworks to see net zero through? And who is more likely to kick the can down the road? That's hard to say. Some utility leaders have privately expressed doubt about Johnson's will or capacity to understand the complexity of delivering net zero – though he did once tell New Scientist that his favourite science topic at school was nuclear physics (shortly before quipping that London should "de• nitely, absolutely" have its own nuclear power station). But Boris has never majored on the detail. Instead he relies on an entourage of experts to do the heavy li‡ ing on policy-making – and now he has the in" uence of Symonds, a motivated environmentalist, to inform him. So perhaps he could mobilise a net zero taskforce capable of delivering the certainty utilities need around the future for energy e" ciency, EV charging frameworks, routes to market for key renewable and carbon capture technologies and so on. Hunt's leadership style is more of an unknown. What we can say with some con• dence is that departmental leadership has a greater chance of stability if he manages to nab the premiership, meaning the energy white paper, coveted by industry leaders and understood to be waiting in the wings, has a greater chance of seeing the light of day this year. (See Conservative leadership race analysis, p10.) Jane Gray, content director, janegray@fav-house.com

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