John Baldwin made a blindingly obvious, but superbly simple comment this week. We're in the middle of an energy crisis and yet there is deafening silence when it comes to energy efficiency advice and helping customers to use less energy.
Over the next 4 months, we're going to use ~60% of our annual gas consumption. The current wholesale cost of gas is >210p a therm, and the Price Cap assumes the wholesale cost is ~60p.
If we reduce our gas consumption used on heating by ~10%, then as retail customers we will make a modest saving of £25 over the period (rising to a projected ~£40 for the Winter-22 Price Cap. Huge caveat here.)
Over the same period, retailers would either avoid purchasing additional gas or be able to sell back excess gas, saving/making >£30 per customer.
One way to do this, would be to tweak the flow/return temperature on our combo boilers, and get them to run more efficiently. Combi boilers aren't running at 90% efficiency and are typically oversized - which leads to further inefficiency.
If we could deliver a 10% saving on heating gas usage, that would deliver £450m in savings for customers and £550m in savings for suppliers by the end of March 22.
This is just one thing we can do.
Ian Barker
Ian shapes the BFY vision and inspires our team to bring it to life, while remaining central to complex client engagements in Strategy, Commercial, and Operations.
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