GLEG

In England, the water retail market opened in April 2017.  Set up by the government and led by Ofwat, Defra and MOSL, 1.2 million businesses in England can now tender water services to find a deal which is best suited to them.

Ofgem’s targeted charging review will change how suppliers price your future electricity contracts.   All TCR changes were initially planned to be implemented by Ofgem in April 2022, however, there is now expected to be a delay in the implementation of some of these changes.

Bank holiday Monday, 5^th April 2021 was the greenest day Great Britain has ever seen, National Grid has confirmed. Over the bank holiday long-weekend we saw sunny and windy weather, this coupled with warm temperatures and lower than average demand meant renewable energy made up just under 80% of Britain’s generation mix.

Budget 2021 – A summary of the energy sector

Unsurprisingly, Coronavirus and the UK’s economic recovery from the last twelve months dominated Rishi Sunak’s 2021 budget. Climate change and the UK’s 2050 Net Zero target understandably featured much less compared to the budget twelve months ago, however some energy policies did come to fruition from the budget.

There are confusing and overlapping terms to describe sustainable energy.  With an increased focus on net zero, sustainability and for businesses to reduce carbon footprint it can be quite confusing for non-energy experts to keep up to date with the terminology and acronyms.

Oil is now trading close to $60 a barrel for the first time since January 2020.  Oil prices collapsed in Q1 2020 when coronavirus swept through Europe and America. In April 2020 WTI (the benchmark for US oil) fell to minus $37/bbl as producers were paying buyers to take oil off them to avoid storage costs.

Britain produced more electricity from renewable generators than from fossil fuels for the first time in 2020.

Combined wind, solar, bioenergy and hydropower – all renewable energy sources – generated a record 42% of the UK’s electricity in 2020 compared to fossil fuels, which accounted for 41% of the UK generation mix.

UK business gas invoices are much simpler in terms of structure than your typical business electricity invoice.  The chart below highlights the split of a typical business gas invoice.  With the commodity making up such a large percentage of the invoice a pro-active gas purchasing strategy is essential to minimise gas charges.

2020 was a challenging year (to say the least) and 2021 has not started much better and the uncertainty in global commodity prices is expected to continue.  With the hope that the vaccine roll-out should allow the UK to return to some sort of pre-covid normality in 2021, the below summarises what to look out for in the utilities industry, how utilities may affect your business and tips to reduce your utility spend through 2021.

What is DCP268?

Businesses with small non-half hourly electricity meters which require manual reads to ensure accurate billing may see a change in how these meters are invoiced from April 2021.