Fine ambitions on increasing customer switching run into one problem: it’s a tedious business, and one that leaves you uncertain, on switching sites, whether you really have got a better deal. Janet Wood spoke to two companies hoping to take the pressure off domestic consumers – and one hoping to get small businesses more active
Consumers are becoming increasingly better informed and sophisticated: the internet gives them the tools to change and their expectations are driven by service they have experienced in other sectors.
We need storage immediately to help solve growing network and supply problems, says Jill Cainey. That means a new framework – and looking again at DNOs’ regulatory settlement, she told Janet Wood
Changes to the licensing regime for water abstraction threatened to raise costs and risk for hydro plants and for generators who use water for cooling. New proposals partially ease those fears, as Karma Ockenden explains
As Decc prepares to consult on taking UK coal plants off the system by the mid-2020s, Janet Wood looks at the options.
Climate change, and fears over lack of mitigation or adaptation, has been rated the top risk on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) 11th annual Global Risks Report.
Following the first Transitional Capacity Market auction, 803MW of demand response capacity is set to receive contracts at a price of £27.50/kW/yr, according to provisional results from National Grid. The delivery year is 2016/17.
Energy markets are failing: even if the cost of wind or other renewable sources attains ‘grid parity’, and even if there is a significant carbon price, the market will not provide a secure basis for renewables.
A third of major projects due to be delivered by government in the next five years are at risk of failure, according to a report for the Public Accounts Committee produced by the National Audit Office (NAO).
