ScottishPower, together with the other five UK major energy suppliers, has agreed to the Government’s plans to increase current investment in the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) by 20% between 2008 and 2011 amounting to an extra investment of £560 million across the industry. ScottishPower will also contribute to the new Community Energy Saving Programme, which is similar to the CERT obligation. This represents an another increase of 12.5 % to the CERT programme which will be split between the other five energy suppliers and the UK’s independent electricity generators – representing a separate rise for the industry of £350 million.
Together with the other measures announced by the Government today, this amounts to an additional contribution of £910 million from the energy industry through until 2011 on increasing the energy efficiency of UK homes.
Even before today’s increase, ScottishPower was already committed to spend £270 million under CERT by 2011. ScottishPower recently became the first company to achieve the Government's Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC) targets - the programme that preceeded CERT. To achieve this target, ScottishPower spent £150 million between 2005 and 2008 to provide long term energy efficient measures to UK households including installing over 420,000 cavity wall and loft insulations as well as distributing over 5 million energy efficient light bulbs.
In addition, ScottishPower also recently announced separate plans to spend £40 million on measures to protect its most vulnerable customers over the next three years. This was part of a voluntary increase totaling £225 million - agreed in April this year, after consultation with the Government and OFGEM. At the same time, ScottishPower remains one of only two suppliers to hold standard prepayment annual bills for both gas and electricity below those for customers on standard quarterly prices - equivalent to an annual saving of £14 million to over 640,000 ScottishPower customers.
Around 1.4 million ScottishPower customers – equivalent to almost 1 in 4 domestic customers – currently enjoy the protection of a fixed or capped price product.
ScottishPower Chief Executive, Nick Horler, said:
“After exhaustive and unprecedented discussions with the Government, ScottishPower has agreed to meet the considerable financial and logistical challenge outlined today. The combined impact of these two increases to the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target on top of our already significant commitments, amounts to a spend on energy efficiency that totals almost £4 billion over 3 years.”
“Now these measures have finally been agreed, it is time to move on and focus on the urgent need to replace the UK’s ageing generation fleet by undertaking the largest generation investment programme in UK history. The Governments own estimates suggest that over £100 billion of investment is required over the next 10 years to ensure the UK’s security of supply beyond 2015.”
“As part of the Iberdrola Group, ScottishPower is committed to invest £2.8billion in the UK over the next 2 years alone in renewable energy, improving the network and environmental improvements in traditional generation. Since the integration with Iberdrola, every £1 of profit is being re-invested into new projects in the UK.”
Media information – Simon McMillan 0141 566 4875 / 07753 622 257