Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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Seven days... National media story by NUMBERS Gas futures Lancashire wants more fracking profits Conservative MP Robert Halfon has called the premium levied on consumers who don't pay their energy bills by direct debit an "extortionate stealth tax" on consumers. MPs and councils in Lancashire will not support fracking unless local communities receive a far bigger slice of the spoils, David Cameron has been warned. A standing offer by the shale gas industry to hand local communities 1 per cent of the revenue from nearby fracking wells "doesn't go nearly far enough", according to a cross-party letter dispatched to the prime minister this week. The Times £24 Halfon's recommended 'discount' for those paying by direct debit Cameron 'right' about weather link £114 Climate scientists have backed David Cameron's statement that he "very much suspects" the recent extreme weather events Britain has suffered are linked to climate change. The Financial Times average current difference between direct debit and other means of payment 45% The crazy spending that causes flooding proportion of customers who do not pay their energy bill by direct debit We all know what's gone wrong, or we think we do: not enough spending on flood defences. But too little public spending is a small part of the problem. Vast amounts of public money, running into billions, are spent every year on policies that make devastating floods inevitable. George Monbiot, The Guardian £60k With the Environment Agency firmly in the public eye, some say the salary for a new chairman, advertised this week, is too low 1m number of people without a bank account, and who therefore cannot use direct debit Eggborough threatens to lead coal plant exodus The prospect of a major capacity crunch came closer this week with the fate of Eggborough power station hanging in the balance and the big six calling time on a clutch of traditional generators. A behind-the-scenes campaign to save Eggborough from closure following its exclusion from government funding ramped up, with constituency MP Nigel Adams meeting chancellor George Osborne. Adams was tight-lipped about the meeting, but told Utility Week he was "extremely hopeful that a resolution for Eggborough can be found" and "it is far too important a project for the UK to let go". Eggborough Power has officially scrapped plans to give its old 2GW coal plant, which accounts for 4 per cent of UK generation capacity, a new lease of life by converting it to run on biomass. Cancellation of the "Blackouts would be the best possible thing that could happen" Olympic Delivery Authority chairman Sir John Armitt raised eyebrows with his suggestion that blackouts would create urgency around necessary upgrades to the energy infrastructure 4 | 17th - 23rd January 2014 | UTILITY WEEK investment, worth around £750 million, sets it on course to close by 2015, making 800 workers redundant. Meanwhile, RWE announced plans to shut 3GW-worth of generation capacity by 2023, as the Industrial Emissions Directive kicks in. It has entered Aberthaw, Didcot B and four combined heat and power plants into the Limited Life Derogation, which allows them to run limited hours without upgrading. SSE revealed in December it had earmarked Ferrybridge and Uskmouth coal plants, totalling 1.2GW, for early closure. Other companies are expected to confirm shortly which of their power stations' days are numbered. In its last assessment, Ofgem projected the power generation capacity margin could tighten to between 3 and 7 per cent in 2014/15. MD 33.6% Average rise in energy bills since 2010, compared with a 4.6% rise in wages, according to Citizens Advice