Written by admin on March 13, 2008 – 11:47 am
Recently OFGEM, The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, launched an investigation into the rises in energy prices being experienced by UK electricity and gas customers.
This investigation has followed hot on the heels of Centrica, the owner of British Gas reporting £1.9 billion of annual profits, a new record for Centrica. In recent times accusations that UK energy companies are making excessive profits at the expense of UK consumers. These accusations have been made by organisatios such as Energy Watch - which represents the interests of energy consumers in the UK.
Following these accusations Richard Lambert, the Director General of the CBI, The Confederation of British Industry, issued a statement that defended the level of profits generated by Centrica.
The government tone has been to focus attention away from profits and onto what the Big Six energy companies in the UK should be doing to alleviate ‘fuel poverty’ and to end discrimination against vulnerable sections of British society. Often the lowest earning society are paying the highest prices for their domestic energy: power cards for example often place the cost of a unit of energy far higher than is available with a domestic ‘dry meter’.
The profits enjoyed by energy companies may be high but are they really excessive? What is it that determines an excessive profit?
If you have any thoughts on the issues raised above please let us know in the comments below.
I found this article from Uswitch it sounds like they are taking this seriously and the gas and electricity providers will need to become completely transparent.
Hi James, thanks for the link. Do you believe that this will make UK energy providers transparent. I’m often hearing that the best way to get the energy market working so that it is better for consumers is to start introducing more energy providers/distributors into the market place,. At the moment there are only 6 companies providing the UK with energy - competition would help to control the behaviour of these comapnies.
Yeh, I think that would definitely help. People also need to be wise and compare their offline and online quotes. I came across Atlantic electric and gas, they have cheap prices because they are solely online.
We as consumers need to help ourselves first by constantly switch to keep the energy providers prices competitive.