I can assure you that we do care about our customers, which is why we protected them from the full impact of the extremely high wholesale costs we saw during the summer of 2008. There's always a time lag between changes in wholesale energy prices and retail prices, as we buy energy in advance to make sure it's available when needed - and also to protect customers from spikes in wholesale prices. The energy you're using today was bought when wholesale prices were extremely high.
But, wholesale costs are only part of the picture - the rest of your bill is made up of additional costs such as metering, social and environmental programmes - and many of these costs are rising.
So making any price reductions at the moment is a real challenge for us but we're determined to offer good value to our customers. As you're no doubt aware, we've cut our gas prices http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article7055815.ece
Despite what you read in the papers about energy companies raking in big profits, our latest figures show that for each customer account, we only made 9p a day profit. Our latest profits were £220m - which sounds a lot until you realise our new power station in Pembroke will cost about £1 billion to build. We have also just announced that we're investing a further £100 million in upgrading turbines and other equipment at our power station in Little Barford, Cambridgeshire www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-10/rwe-to-upgrade-turbines-at-little-barford-power-plant-update1-.html
Energy markets are likely to be tested over the coming years - considerable investment is needed to deliver the government's low carbon objectives and still keep the lights on.
