Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
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UTILITY WEEK | 17TH - 23RD APRIL 2015 | 3 Leader Ellen Bennett This week 4 | Seven days 6 | People & Opinion 8 | The Topic Is renewable heat the missing piece of the jigsaw? 15 Policy & Regulation 15 | News Tories pledge to act on CMA advice 16 | Utility Week Lobby Social policy and affordability 20 Finance & Investment 20 | News EDF Energy 'in line for windfall profits' 21 | Analysis Big six suppliers hit back 22 | Market view Picking the lock of renewables investment 23 | Market view Ofgem's cash-out reforms 23 | Analysis Bristol Water stands alone in fight against Ofwat 24 Operations & Assets 24 | Market view The convergence of enterprise IT and industrial control 25 | Event UW Stars Awards shortlist 26 Customers 26 | News Scottish Power backs role of doorstep sales 27 | Market view The gift of complaints 29 Markets & Trading 29 | News Summer demand to be lowest ever 30 Community 30 | Reader of the week Beatrice Rogers, Knowledge Transfer Network 31 | Disconnector The irony of Labour's 'radical' agenda A s Labour confirms its manifesto plans for energy this week, there's a tangible sense of irony. The party plans to stop price rises for 20 months, force suppliers to pass on falling wholesale prices, and break up the vertical integration of the big six. Ed Miliband has made great political capital out these supposedly radical interventions. The irony? They are all happening anyway. Labour would argue that the energy companies' voluntary hold- ing down of prices, and passing on of the fall in wholesale costs, is due to its high-profile intervention in the sector. There may be some truth in this. Certainly, the political and public scrutiny of the past two years has forced energy companies to take clear and decisive steps to protect customer interests. Would chancellor George Osborne have called on energy companies to pass on the fall in wholesale costs if it hadn't been for Ed Miliband? And would the companies have passed on the savings if Osborne hadn't publicly asked them to? We'll never know. We do know, however, that the market would be changing regard- less of political intervention. The energy giants are having to make hard decisions about their future, driven not by politics but by stark economic reality. Eon's decision to split the company, spinning off traditional, fossil-fuel generation and trading from the renewables and customer-facing arm is a sign that the vertically integrated Euro- pean energy company business model is no longer fit for purpose. SSE is already travelling in the same direction and, with a major new strategy announcement expected from Centrica this summer, and RWE revealing this week plans to slash its administrative costs by a third, the pressure is clear. Meanwhile, switching is on the rise and new players are capitalising on their agility and comparatively unblemished reputations. Add to this the Competition and Markets Authority inquiry, something the energy companies had been calling for even before Miliband made his price freeze pledge, and seismic changes in UK energy become all but inevitable. Incidentally, the same is true of the water sector, where you have Labour calling for a national affordability policy at the same time as the last few water companies seal their plans to launch their own social tariffs. It's great politics to take the credit for changes that are already underway, but let's not kid ourselves: the utilities market as we know it is over, regardless of the outcome on 7 May. Ellen Bennett, Editor ellen.bennett@fav-house.com GAS 20 | Stock watch RWE and Eon 24 | Market view The convergence of enterprise IT and industrial control WATER 23 | Analysis Bristol Water stands alone in fight against Ofwat ELECTRICITY 15 | News UK SNP would reform transmission regime 20 | News UK still number one for offshore wind 21 | Analysis Big six suppliers hit back 22 | Market view Picking the lock of renewables investment 26 | News Scottish Power backs role of doorstep sales ENERGY 8 | Topic Is renewable heat the missing piece of the emissions jigsaw? 15 | News Tories pledge to act on advice of CMA 20 | News EDF Energy 'in line for windfall profits' 23 | Market view Ofgem's cash-out reforms 27 | Market view The gift of complaints 26 | News Energy bills top list of consumer worries Knowledge worth keeping Visit the Downloads section of Utility Week's website http://www.utilityweek.co.uk/ downloads Salesforce: How the cloud can help meet business objectives http://bit.ly/1EFZjlj Vodafone: Machine- to-Machine (M2M) Utilities Insights http://bit.ly/1BDpCGZ