Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 6TH - 12TH DECEMBER 2019 | 5 LAST CHANCE TO BOOK A TABLE! This year's Utility Week Awards will be held in London this coming Monday, 9 December. The full shortlist is available at: https://utilityweekawards.co.uk €692 million A "hard elecxit" – the UK's departure from the EU internal energy market – could raise annual generation costs in Great Britain and France by €692 million (£590 million) by 2030, say researchers at Imperial College London. WATER Thames rules out going offshore Thames Water's chief financial officer has admitted to Utility Week that the threat of renationalisation is unsettling investors, but insisted the firm has no plans to reopen its controversial Cayman Islands sub- sidiaries to mitigate its impact. Brandon Rennet also said he was "cautiously optimistic" that the company would not need to go to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over Ofwat's final determination of its business plan for the next five years. Rennet was speaking to UW on the back of the publication of Thames's half-year results, which showed total turnover up slightly to £1.1 billion, largely reflective of under-recovery of revenue last year. Underlying operating profit was £301.2 million in April to September this year, compared with £224 million in the same period last year. Thames recorded a pre-tax loss of £54.3 million, compared with a profit of £42.4 million in H1 2018, which Rennet said was mainly due to market-to-market movement on hedging instruments used to reduce risk. SES announces new chief executive SES Water has announced Ian Cain will replace Anthony Ferrar as chief executive from February. Ferrar, who has been with the company for 11 years, announced his retirement earlier this year. Cain is currently chief executive officer of iSupplyEnergy and was previously managing director of retail and group customer service at Thames Water. SES Water chairman Jeremy Pelczer said: "During the recruit- ment process I was particularly impressed with Ian's unwavering focus on the importance of the ser- vice we provide to our customers." APPOINTMENT Apple is now worth more than all large-cap US energy stocks put together. A share rally has pushed the iPhone manufacturer's market capitalisation to nearly $1.2tn, surpassing the value of the S&P 500 energy sector and wresting back the crown of the world's most valuable listed company from rival Microso›. Apple worth more than US energy stocks combined Apple's shares have climbed almost 70 per cent this year, touching a new high of $267.84 earlier this month. Source: FT COMPLAINTS TO OFGEM ELECTRICITY DNOs 'will be blamed for delaying net zero' Distribution network operators (DNOs) will be accused of slowing the progress of decarbon- isation if their own plans for future-proofing networks are not already well advanced. This is the view of UK Power Networks' director of network operations, Patrick Clarke, who said DNOs cannot wait for policies to be implemented on the path to net zero. He told the Street Works UK conference last week that DNOs are at the forefront of preparations for a 2050 strategy, with key areas of focus around electric vehicle charging networks, energy storage and the decarbonisation of heat. If policy eventually overtakes progress and DNOs are seen as delaying the decarbonisation programme, there will be a backlash, Clarke insisted: "We as DNOs are leading the low- carbon transition. [We are] facilitating low-carbon generation and storage connections. If we said that was too difficult, that we need more time, people would blame us for stopping the transi- tion to a low-carbon economy." Clarke pointed to the work already under- taken by UKPN, which expects to double its capacity of distributed generation from its current level of 9.4GW, from more than 170,000 distribution connected generators, by 2028. The group wants up to 4GW of electricity storage by the same year. Source: Ofgem 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 Marke cap ($tn) Apple S&P 500 Energy Source: FT

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