How HeatingSave Helps Businesses | Page 17

Unleaded petrol is close to its record price at the pumps, even though there has been a sustained fall in the cost of oil in the medium term. Since April, the cost of Brent crude has dropped by 18 per cent while this week unleaded petrol cost an average of 136.58 pence a litre across Britain’s forecourts. The petrol industry responded that prices are only partially dependent on the cost of crude oil.

Energy firms increased their profits from customers by 50 per cent in the space of four months, while Britain shivered through the coldest winter for decades. In the autumn the firms were making £65 annual profit per customer but that figure is now £97 on a typical household energy bill of £1,200.

Britain is not on course to meet its climate change targets for reducing carbon emissions, the Government was warned by the independent Committee on Climate Change. The Government needs to reduce carbon dioxide by 34 per cent (on 1990 levels) by 2020. However in its second progress report to Parliament, the committee said the sharp fall in UK greenhouse gas emissions of 8.6 per cent last year is almost entirely due to the recession, and that the proportion of the drop due to actual climate policies is but “a fraction” of the total.

Overall gas prices for non-commercial customers might decrease by up to an impressive 27%, should the UK decide to go ahead with large-scale exploration of its shale gas reserves, a new study carried out by Navigant Consulting and commissioned by the DECC has revealed.

Digital waste is an unknown but huge quantity – almost everything we do online increases our carbon footprint. Antivirus company McAfee has measured that the electricity needed just to transmit the trillions of spam e-mails sent every year is equivalent to powering two million homes in the United States and generates the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as that produced by three million cars.

Almost half of office workers said their offices have become more energy efficient since the recession began. The YouGov survey also found 57 per cent of those polled said their green workplace has led to reduced costs, so it seems ‘going green’ has resulted in managers saving money. The survey also discovered that popular green measures in offices included turning off computer equipment when not in use (67 per cent did so).

Small and medium-sized businesses are finding it more difficult to become more energy efficient, according to one expert. Smaller businesses have less funding to siphon off resources for green measures, says Professor Ross King, joint programme director at the Centre for Sustainable Environmental Management-Brunel Management Programme.

The company that owns British Gas has warned that customers may face higher energy bills. Centrica said “end-user prices” did not reflect the price it was paying for gas on the wholesale market. The firm said in a statement: “In the UK, the forward wholesale prices of gas and power for delivery in winter 2011/12 are currently around 25% higher than prices last winter, with end-user prices yet to reflect this higher wholesale market price environment.”

Consumers are being urged to implement green home improvements and waste less energy as a means of avoiding imminent expensive energy bills. “The Green Deal will help householders upgrade their homes to waste less energy, and our electricity market reforms will bring on investment in clean energy sources that are not vulnerable to global price shocks,” said energy secretary Chris Huhne.

This week the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed carbon dioxide emissions hit a record high last year. “Energy-related carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2010 were the highest in history, according to the latest estimates,” the IEA said in a statement. Emissions are estimated to have climbed to a record five percent jump from the previous record year in 2008, when levels reached 29.3 gigatonnes, the IEA added.

Scottish Power will raise the cost of gas by 19 per cent and the cost of electricity by 10% from August 1. Affected customers will see an average daily rise to a dual fuel energy bill of 48p per day. The company said the move reflected sustained increases in the wholesale energy market, and more energy companies are expected to follow suit. Scottish Power last put its prices up in November, when gas prices increased 2% and electricity bills 8.9%.

The solar industry is disputing claims on the comparative cost of solar and nuclear power. A report from the recent parliamentary Climate Change Committee backed new nuclear as the cheapest option for the green power the UK needs to hit its carbon-reduction targets. Solar firms disagree, claiming that solar costs should be compared with retail prices, due to the scale of the technology. The industry has taken its fight over plans to slash the feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme to the House of Lords.