Employment Appeals Tribunal Rules on Holiday Pay

The Employment Appeals Tribunal has announced its judgement on the correct interpretation of EU rules on holiday pay. As expected, they have ruled, to the consternation of businesses across the UK, that overtime payments should be included when calculating staff holiday pay. This chastening burden however could have been worse. The spectre of backdated claims, […]

Drax, Biomass and the politics of renewables

Biomass, of all the renewable energy sources, has had a difficult year. Firstly, the rising controversy over the source of the wood being used for energy production. Secondly the on-going reliance on North American pellets and their associated transportation costs. And thirdly the UK government’s controversial decision to drop a promised Contract for Difference (CFD) […]

The Oil Price War Opens a New Frontier

The talk had been that the war on ISIS would be the progenitor of volatility in the oil market, whilst that still may prove the case a different war has erupted. This time however it is an economic one. Oil prices have been tumbling for weeks as OPEC producers fail to reduce production and in […]

Helm: Capacity Margin Should be More Than 10%

Respected energy commentator Dieter Helm has laid bare the failings of the UK energy market. Helm, Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford, told the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee that the UK’s winter capacity margin should be “North of 10% but probably less than 20%”. In their Winter Outlook Report […]

Energy Capacity Returns but Manufacturer Concerns Remain

Cheers and celebration could have been expected as rare good news was heard amongst the scare stories of dwindling generation capacity for Winter 2014/15. The Good RWE’s 400MW Great Yarmouth Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT) power station returned to service following 8 months of repairs with RWE Generation UK’s distributed assets group manager Kerry Nesbitt […]

9% of Market Now in Small Suppliers’ Hands

Energy UK’s latest report on the energy market has revealed that smaller energy suppliers are taking a larger share than ever of the market from the Big 6. The report, undertaken by Cornwall Energy, also revealed that there are more energy suppliers than ever active in the market. The October update showed: The market share […]

No Surprises in Latest Big 6 Complaint Statistics

The latest complaint statistics for the Big 6 energy suppliers continues its tale of woe. Whilst nPower remained rooted to the bottom of the table with 648 complaints per 100,000 customers, this was actually a reduction from 665 in the first quarter of 2014. Still though this represents a huge figure, nearly three times the […]

Energy Generation Sources Battle Cheapest Claim

Mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the cheapest of them all EU analysis has claimed to prove the cheapest source of energy once external factors like air quality; human toxicity and climate change are taken into account. The report is controversial in that its results can and are, being read in different ways enabling alternate […]

October SMI from Ofgem

Supply Market Indicators In our regular monthly review of Ofgem’s Supply Market Indicators we focus on October’s release from the energy regulator. October 2014 The October 2014 SMI from Ofgem reported that: They estimate that the average annual dual fuel bill has fallen slightly for the next 12 months remains broadly in line with last month at […]

Environment Agency Boss to Run Driller Backed Fracking ‘Task Force’

Lord Smith of Finsbury, the former Labour cabinet minister and former chairman of the Environment Agency is to head a “task force” into investigating the benefits and risks of fracking. Rather underwhelmingly Smith said the task force would: “Go some way to answering important questions and tackling legitimate concerns [about fracking]”. This was followed by […]