Utility Week

16 | 10TH - 16TH JANUARY 2020 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Chief executive's view A new decade unfolds As 2020 dawns, some utilities industry watchers predict what they see as the key issues up ahead. Six key battlegrounds "As 2019 brings the end of an era for one big six, here are six themes that I think will shape the energy market, some for the next year, some for perhaps the next decade." Matthew Vickers, Energy Ombudsman Transition and trust It's hard to overstate the importance of trust in the energy transition. The author and in uencer Rachel Botsman de nes trust as "a con dent relationship with the unknown". Getting to net zero involves all of us changing our behaviours and adopting new products, new services, new practices and new ways of thinking and living which are unknown. There are massive opportunities for innovation and invest- ment in infrastructure that depend on earning that trust and con dence. Journeys and ecosystems The retail market is changing rapidly with the emergence of community energy, peer- to-peer, connected homes and vehicles, and energy, heat and mobility as services. Com- panies have seen the opportunity for ser- vices as the engine of both future growth and progress to net zero. The market is becoming a complex and fragmented ecosystem. Digitalisation, decentralisa- tion and decarbonisation might be the Ds everyone's talking about, but they're nothing without delivery. Translating good intent and exciting visions into better outcomes for consum- ers comes down to execution. That will look very di‚ erent in a world shaped by data, partnerships and platforms rather than traditional patterns of generation and distribution. Regulation gets micro Nationalisation may be receding on the risk register for utilities, but it's clear there's still a huge job to be done around convincing the public that they can trust energy and water companies. The macro question of public ownership seems set to be replaced by a micro focus on improving outcomes for individual consumers. The Competition and Markets Author- ity, National Infrastructure Commission, National Audit O‰ ce and Public Accounts Committee have all signalled much more attention to this micro level to demonstrate how regulation is improving fairness for individuals rather than theoretical cohorts. Competition law has proved too slow in tackling this – redress is needed. Competing for margin – caps, service andprice There's intense competition around price and, as the costs of supplier failures have "Throughout our 14 years as Energy Ombudsman, complaints about billing have made up the bulk of problems brought to us."

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