Business News

A second big energy supplier has hinted that gas and electricity prices may rise steeply this year. Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) said its household gas business had been losing money, with a 25 per cent rise in wholesale prices last year outgaining December’s 9% rise. SSE warned that wholesale gas and electricity prices for the coming year had gone up since then by as much as 33%.

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%.

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.

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.

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.

More details have emerged concerning the Green Deal scheme which is designed to help people pay for home insulation and other energy saving measures. The plan is for authorised companies to pay for the insulation work and homeowners will repay the money, plus interest, through additional charges on their energy bills. Climate change minister Greg Barker said: “The Green Deal is the government’s flagship energy saving plan to transform the country’s homes to make them warmer and cheaper to run.”

The owner of British Gas has hinted that it will raise prices for its gas and electricity customers again. Centrica’s statement to investors warned them to expect lower profits for the first half of 2011. The energy giant said “retail margin recovery” would boost its profits in the second half of the year to make up for this. Already in May Centrica said its customers were not paying enough to reflect the increased cost of gas on the wholesale market.

In what it has called the continued rationalisation of its windfarm portfolio, one of the ‘Big Six’ energy providers has sold off assets – but this is not likely to prevent it raising bills later in the year.

In a move which has been widely predicted but is still unwelcome nevertheless, British Gas is putting up gas prices by 18 per cent and electricity prices by 16% from August 18, 2011. The utility last raised its rates back in December 2010 by 6.9% for gas and 6.7% for electricity. This means British Gas customers will have seen their bills increase by one-quarter in the last year alone. The firm has blamed the rises on the increasing wholesale cost of gas.

A council says it is saving more than £3,000 a month by turning off some street lights after midnight. Carmarthenshire council ensures that 3,000 of the lights within its jurisdiction are dimmed in the early hours of the morning.

The Government has announced big changes in the way Britain organises its electricity production partly in a bid to cut high fuel bills. It will offer generating companies long-term contracts at fixed prices to produce low-carbon power – in other words, from renewable sources and nuclear installations.

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.