When we talk to our customers about the amount of profit we generate it sounds like a huge amount of money. Its only when we get the chance to explain those profits in the context of the size and scale of our business that it really makes sense. We generate more than 10% of the nation’s electricity using eight huge power stations. The cost of building just one of these power stations is more than double what we earned in 2008.
As a business we will be investing more than we earn in the UK for the next 10 years. A large part of this investment will go towards building new cleaner power stations to replace old coal fired ones. And in terms of keeping the nation’s light’s on - that’s a vital investment.
We believe that our prices are fair. We actually protect our customers from the harsh reality of the wholesale energy market. Our earnings from our retail business have been down in recent years because although our customer prices did rise, we did not match the huge peaks in wholesale costs. At the end of the day, it is our job to smooth prices as much as we can, and we willingly accept that responsibility, but we are in no doubt that protecting our customers from the highs in the wholesale market has cost our business many millions of pounds.
