Utilities Insider Issue 4

Issue 4 – 6th January 2012

Happy New Year! Welcome to the fourth edition of Utilities Insider! – Every two months we keep you up to date with the utilities markets, including important news on industry developments, changes in regulation, and changes in price. Here’s the round up of the end of 2011′s notable energy news:

Ofgem promising ‘better protection for businesses’

Possibly the most important news for SMEs last year was that Ofgem (the energy regulator) announced a set of 4 measures it wants to implement to better protect you from the malpractice of energy suppliers and Third-party Intermediaries (brokers, like us). Great news for the industry, we hope! It won’t change much for Utilities Savings though – we’ve been working to a strict code of practice since October 2009 anyway to ensure that everyone in our organisation acts in an honest and open way, with your best interests at heart. [Full Story]

‘Durban Platform’ agreed at COP17 means Kyoto II in 2015

The latest Climate Change Summit in Durban, after nearly 2 weeks of stalling talks, finally achieved some level of agreement between the 194 countries involved. At first India, China and the US were all at loggerheads regarding legally binding targets to reduce carbon emissions, but at the last minute a new text known as the ‘Durban Platform’ was thrashed out in an unorthodox manner. [Full Story]

Imported gas prices rise 40%, putting shale in the spotlight

This year a multitude of factors including the Fukushima disaster, political changes in the Middle-east and the depletion of North sea gas have meant that for the first time ever, the UK is importing more gas than it is extracting itself. This is pushing the forward price of wholesale gas up at a very fast rate. Many people are calling for the government to look at shale gas as a serious alternative to Russian imports and renewables. There have been many concerns over the safety of shale, as an investigation found that drilling caused 50 minor earthquakes earlier this year. [Full Story]

Solar industry in decline around the world

The effectiveness of renewables took another big hit this week as it was revealed that over 5,000 solar companies went bust in Germany in 2011, shedding 20,000 jobs as it did so. The same thing has happened in the US this year with, most notably, Solyndra going bust after receiving over half a billion dollars of US taxpayer money. [Full Story]

Final round-up

To round off the first issue of 2012, here’s a round-up of the other main stories we’ve reported on:

In the end to a busy year for news in general, the Energy & Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne slammed critics of renewable energy as ‘curmudgeons and faultfinders’, figures were released showing that global carbon emissions had increased as the Chinese economy booms, and we also reported on the main problem with wind turbines – the fact that they don’t produce constant power so always need a backup source.

We hope you are finding Utilities Insider useful. If you have any feedback, queries, or suggestions please email us, call us on 0845 33 75 997 or enquire through the website at http://utilitiessavings.co.uk.

Kind Regards,

Utilities Savings

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