Making Great Britain’s energy transition fair for everyone with Dhara Vyas (EnergyUK)

When I say that I work in energy, the question I get most often is when are my energy bills coming down?

If you work in industry, you probably recognize this situation.

The concern at rising bills amongst your family and friends and their frustration at how little progress seems to be made. It's headline news, it's fueling political parties, and it's shaping the national conversation. With the government's next budget on November the twenty sixth, that's the question hanging over Westminster. How do you make power affordable without stalling the clean energy build out that's supposed to make it all cheaper in the long run?

But the truth is it's hard to bring bills down when the system itself is expensive. We don't just pay for energy. We pay for the way we organize it through levies, network costs, and an array of complex charges. And if you want to dig into how all of these work, it's not easy.

There are ten thousand pages of industry code. That's more than four times the length of the complete works of Shakespeare. The way suppliers and generators buy and sell power at a wholesale level is traditional and it's the same wholesale price whether you're in Cornwall or the Highlands. That's known as national pricing and it's how our current system works.

Incumbents argue that it's simple, but the grid doesn't work that way. It's more like a network of pipes with blockages and bottlenecks. When it's windy in Scotland, it costs almost nothing to supply local homes, whereas pushing that power south costs more because the wires are congested. And that's where the argument for locational incentives comes from.

If you live in the shadow of a vast wind farm, why shouldn't your bills cost less? Why not make hay while the sun is shining? And that example, equality versus efficiency is at the heart of almost every conversation in UK energy right now. It shapes where we build, how we invest, and who pays.

On top of this, electricity carries the weight of yesterday's and today's policy choices. Every government mandated program, capacity payments to gas or to add home insulation adds a little bit to your bill. As we electrify homes and cars, we're asking people to switch to something that might cost more in the short term whilst also asking them to have faith in the long term benefits. And when it comes to politics in twenty twenty five, faith is in short supply.

Today's guest, Dara, runs Energy UK, the trade body representing companies that generate and sell power. She knows affordability isn't something industry can fix alone, and she's trying to make energy work for consumers, not just for big companies. She wants to see policy cost moved from bills into taxation. She wants targeted support that actually finds the people who need it using data from the Department of Work and Pensions, HMRC, local councils, and even the health service.

And she wants a smarter, cheaper system built around flexibility, shifting demand, optimizing the grid instead of blunt subsidies that hide the real problem. So on today's episode, we talk about what it actually takes to bring bills down, why the UK's push for Clean Power twenty thirty is colliding with everyday affordability, how a lack of progress on reforms to national pricing will impact investment, and ultimately, where the government can deliver on a lower bill's promise.

Hello, Dara, and welcome to transmission.

Thank you so much for having me in.

My pleasure. And as ever, let's get started by giving our listeners some context. So who are you and who are Energy UK?

So my name is Dara Vias. I am the chief executive of Energy UK. Energy UK is the trade association that represents businesses working right across the energy sector.

I have worked in and around the energy industry and on energy issues since two thousand and nine, primarily on the customer side of things. Came into Energy UK to work on the advocacy and policy work in the run up to COP26 back in twenty twenty one and I took over as chief executive about a year ago, almost exactly a year ago.

Okay. Where was COP26?

COP26 was Glasgow and when I was appointed, I came from a consumer background and for me, joining Energy UK, if you remember the time, everyone was pro net zero, it was all about kind of this huge change we were going to have right across the country.

And for me, joining the energy industry was a no brainer because two main reasons. One is, it's going be industry that delivers this, right, and I wanted to be part of it. And the other thing is I wanted to make sure they got it right for customers, for all customers regardless of income, regardless of housing tenure and regardless of where they live in the country. So I kind of thought that's where I want to be. The problem is between sort of accepting the job and taking it up, I accept the job in July, moved over in November. Obviously, we began to see the start of the energy crisis and companies started going out of business and I think that the role in working at Energy UK through the energy crisis, the cost of living crisis, that really difficult period where you saw bills kind of quadruple. You know, they always say that you you you're best off when you're kinda just thrown in at the deep end and that's certainly been the case for me.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I remember, I just I just say on COP26, actually Glasgow was a fantastic place to host it.

I remember having to sort of squat effectively in some offices where we had electric vehicle charging points that were being sort of demonstrated to us as we were doing extra work on the side. So shout out to Glasgow for hosting the incident.

Amazing amazing event.

And and let's let's stay on bills because the first question I really want to ask you is the question that I think everyone wants the answer to, which is how do we get bills down?

So I think the first thing to know is that affordability is a significant problem. We're looking at a debt crisis in the energy sector that's going to reach a scale that's never been seen before. I think about projections are that by March next year, debt will have risen to four point five billion pounds and likely it's probably higher than that if we're honest.

And lots of people are really struggling to be able to pay for the energy that they need to use to stay warm, to stay comfortable and safe in their homes.

And that's the context, but the reality is that bringing bills down is not something industry can do alone. We have to be able to work with government and with consumer groups and with the regulator to get these bills down and there are things that government could do. Introducing some sort of energy price guarantee style mechanism, moving levies from electricity into taxation if possible because it's actually quite regressive to keep policy costs, environmental and social levies on bills, but if that's not possible, considering the options when it comes to moving them onto gas in order to bring down the price of electricity. Because we're trying to do a number of different things.

We're trying to increase demand for electricity, we want to electrify, want to decarbonize homes, we want to electrify transport and electricity is just too expensive. I do think there's one caveat that's always really, really important and this is about the fact that energy is an essential service and because energy is an essential service, it's really, really important that we have a way to target help and support to the people who can least afford to pay for the energy that they need to use.

For me, targeted support is all about how we use data.

Okay. It's really interesting. And and on the regressive versus progressive and targeted support, let's put a pin in that, but let's come back to it. Yeah. So let me bring in this new story from yesterday. Today is the fifth of November. We have Rachel Reeves considering slashing funding for energy efficient homes to pay for a reduction in energy bills.

Reeves is finalizing a multibillion pound energy support package likely to cut taxes and green levies from people's bills as she looks to save as much as a hundred and seventy pounds from the average bill. What's your take on that?

So look, I think it's really brilliant that the government is seriously considering how to bring bills down. I think it's the single issue that is really important when it comes to getting people on board with the energy transition. We cannot keep promising that bills will come down because we know that investing in clean power will bring bills down and will lead to stable, affordable bills in the future but not immediately. So there are things government can do.

VAT wouldn't be my first choice. It would reduce bills by about eighty pounds for everyone. I think that taking action to move the environmental levies off electricity would be much more progressive and would have a greater impact on those who need the most help and it would reduce bills for everyone as well. So I do think, you know, moving levies would be a better option there. But, you know, overall, I also think that this a bigger, more sophisticated discussion than we allow ourselves to have. You know, there is no one blunt tool to bring bills down, there are things that can be done, system optimization, increasing flex, making sure we are using energy when it's cheapest and most plentiful on the grid and encouraging customers be able to do that. Giving them the tools is part of what these environmental levies currently do.

Okay. And I think so maybe let's just look at those environmental levies then. And in terms of the levies that you think would kind of be top of the list to be changed or tweaked or moved? What what what would you do first if you were in Rachel Reeves' position?

So I would seriously look at whether eco could be moved into taxation.

I would consider how you'd rebalance between electricity and gas.

But as we talked about earlier, I don't think it's too blunt at all to move levies from electricity to gas because far too many people live in leaky cold houses and are really dependent on gas to keep warm in their homes or have large families or have medical needs and need to kind of stay on the gas heating. So that targeted support is probably the first thing. It's really, really tough but we do it already using DWP data and energy industry data, that's how we target the warm home discount. What we need to do is to be able to work with HMRC and better understand income, we need to be able to work with Department of Health and understand health needs, we need to be able to work with MHC LG and local authorities to properly understand housing and housing conditions and be able to put it all together to get a really good picture of the homes and the people who need help and support.

So Edie is complicated, there is no one simple answer and to give the chancellor credit for the focus on this is that she's not pretending that there's an easy answer.

I think that it is not progressive if we just take VAT off bills and I think we have to always do the balancing act of how you protect people and then how you can move some of those social and environmental levies into either taxation or onto gas.

Okay. I think this this is really interesting and part of the thing you're talking about is a sort of the structural difference between electricity and gas. Why why is that why is that a big issue for you?

So I think successive governments have placed policy costs on electricity because pretty much every home and building have an electricity connection. But as we have to and start to electrify our economy, which is the right thing to do, both in terms of decarbonization and cost, but also in terms of user experience, we need to rethink that. And so having all these costs sitting on electricity just isn't sustainable in the long term.

Okay. We had Guy Newey from the Energy Systems Catapult come through a few months ago, and he was talking about how the early stage RO and fit more reflected early innovation spend and perhaps shouldn't be something that sits on the bill today.

What do you think about moving something like early RO, early fit to They would be part of the basket of environmental levies that I'd be thinking of taking off, you know.

I don't think it's appropriate for them to stay on the bill anymore. They will start to come off anyway towards the end of twenty twenty seven, but it would benefit people's pockets now if we're able to shift them.

Okay.

Move people onto, you know, a new star CFD or consider what the options might be for those generators who are still using them.

And and the critical thing I think that we're sort of driving towards a little bit between gas and electricity is that you can get electricity cost to being something less than four times the cost of gas. And and the reason why sort of that is interesting is because that is the point at which a heat pump starts to be a cost effective solution in terms of saving money versus running gas heating. Yeah. And so is is is that also something that's of in the back of your mind?

Entirely. That's entirely, you know, right now, the upfront cost of a heat pump puts people off and the fact that, you know, you don't make the savings that arguably you ought to be making given the fact that we're going to have what I hope is an abundance of clean power in our energy system.

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Enjoy the conversation.

Moving on from the levees side onto just slightly some of the more broad impacts that the energy sector can have on bringing bills down. You mentioned a little bit around, like, market efficiency. What would be sort of on your hit list of changes you'd like to see outside of just shifting where the levees sit?

So shifting where the levees sit is obviously up there, targeted support is up there and then I think, you know, making sure we're optimizing our system so that we are making the most of customer flex. I feel like we were having a conversation about digitization and digitalization in a really complex, sophisticated way before the pandemic and events have meant that that's not really at the top of our list anymore.

That's not to say we're not doing it, it's just not that number one thing that we're all talking about.

And I think that progress has been slow when it comes to things like retail market reform. You know, the retailers are the ones who have the relationship with every home business in this country. They are right there at the coalface of interacting with customers and we ought to be really focused on making it easier for them to have interesting tailored offers and tariffs and systems and bundled products and services. Right now, I don't think that the regulatory policy landscape for retailers is really kind of focused on making it easier for them to do that.

It's very hard for them to attract investment and therefore it's actually just quite hard for them to innovate, really innovate in this space. There are notable exceptions, there are notable exceptions and they all have heat pump offers, but it'd be really good if we had an abundance of kind of bundled tariffs offers, interesting, exciting kind of ways of doing things. And, you know, the last thing I'll say on this is I think actually the demand side is the bit we don't talk about enough and smart meters are key to unlocking so much of this and we've got, you know, another thirty five percent of homes to get smart meters into.

Being able to, yes, of course, accurately understand what you're using and when but also properly billing half hourly and things like that. It's all it's all the kind of building blocks of what you need in order to have that smart home approach.

Agree and and I think there are some elements of the transition that are coming, for example, more electric vehicles in the home that are so important for the wider system because it does things like it raises demand Yeah. So it shifts the levies across more megawatt hours being deployed. Yeah. But also those electric vehicles, it doesn't really matter if you charge, but you don't necessarily need to charge between four and seven on an evening peak.

So you're not necessarily raising peak, you can actually just be raising demand at times when we already have negative pricing. So Exactly. It's such a key message. I personally I'm a massive NG nerd, so I have my sort of house on a on a half hourly tariff.

What about you? What what what tariff do you have?

So actually, tell you what's really interesting is we're undergo we moved about a year ago and we're renovating the house. So, I've just started getting quotes for heat pumps and so right now, I just have the sort of tariff where it's cheap overnight, so I can charge the car.

Very nice.

I am am looking into solar panels, heat pump, battery. I am also really hoping I can automate a lot of it.

I can I can say from from the other side, yes, you absolutely can? And I all all I do, the the as an end user of it, all I do is I show people charts until they're extremely very bored with that conversation.

Yeah. Look, I think the reality is actually I'm not that person. I think that I think it's great that there are people like you who like to do that. I suspect my husband will be very into it as well.

For me, personally, I have this job, it is quite a big job. I have two children, I have, you know, an aging parent, I have lots of commitments because I'm that sort of person who puts her hand up for things. The reason I'm telling you all of this is because actually, I don't think I'm that unusual in having a fairly complex busy life. I think that's pretty normal and so much of this is about making people's lives easier and about making it easier to be able to use energy when it's cheapest and most abundant because you want to do the right thing and use clean power when you can, but also you want cheaper bills.

So it needs to be able to work for people who are into the charts, but also for people who just want an easier life with affordable bills and to feel like you're using clean green power.

We we had a great take from one of our earlier Australian episodes, which was essentially saying, please industry, stop stop trying to explain to people what a virtual power plant is. Yeah. They don't care. They just want They don't care.

They just want cheap bills.

Yeah. One of the things I always used to say when I worked at the consumer advocate is that it doesn't taste, look, feel, smell different when you switch the light on, when you switch energy provider. It just doesn't, right? And I think that's one of the reasons that I'm not a big fan of switching as a measure of engagement with the energy market.

I think that we should be looking to overhaul the way we consider how people engage with our market.

Engagement is very broad term but you can be engaged and be on a five year tariff because you're really happy with your supplier. Switching away isn't the mark of engagement, you know. We should be looking for loyal customers who really like the brand and buy into what they really like the product and the service and what they're getting. That's not a bad thing and that doesn't make it a bad market if people are not switching.

It feels like such a a hangover. I used I mean, you started in two thousand and nine, you said. I started in two thousand eleven. My first job was in domestic pricing.

Oh, wow.

And, yeah, exciting space. And and and and it really is sort of I think a hangover, that switching piece is a hangover from the sort of early teens of you have to switch supplier to save a hundred pounds. That was sort of that was sort of the the assumed knowledge about energy markets that, you know, that was the way that you engage with the market and I think as you say, like, it's not really a very good measure of actually how engaged people are and to me, think it's a hangover from those days.

I think it's a hangover from the privatization, the idea that the big six kind of weren't pricing competitively, the introduction of the price cap obviously had an impact on not penalizing people for staying with their supplier, you you shouldn't be penalized if you choose not to switch. So, I think it was of its time and place, that approach. I just don't think we should be trying to flog switching, is it? Because really, the biggest saving you make is on your first switch away from your incumbent pre privatization supplier to a modern supplier.

After that, any switches you make, you're saving twenty pounds to thirty pounds that's not to be sniffed at over an annual bill but it is also not as significant as the savings you could make if you were to be able to use energy flexibly.

I I think I wholeheartedly agree. I think we we've kind of we've got that almost that focus in the wrong place and it's sort of truly engaged groups of people who are looking at, can I use more overnight with my EV? Can I be on a half hourly tariff and be flexible? Yeah.

Let's let's move off tariffs and let's just go to a much broader question around NGUK. So we've talked about how to get bills down and we know that it's not just a sort of a political discussion. There's also elements of how the industry is is involved in it. So what does Energy UK specifically do in this space?

So we I would describe us as the trusted voice of the energy industry. We are almost like a bridge between industry and the capability and the delivery that industry does and government action. And we try and bring the expertise of the sector together, so really considering how interventions in the power market might have an impact on customers, thinking about something happening in retail, what that might mean upstream and through the system too. So there are many energy trade associations and our colleagues from across this space all play a vital role. Many of them have a deep technical expertise. I think that my team are experts in the energy system, but because we look across the whole sector and we look across a range of technologies, we have a responsibility to bring the whole system perspective. So that is what I'd describe as our USP.

We have a real focus on protecting customers and we have a real focus on ensuring that private sector investment flows into the UK.

Okay. Understood. And I think on that sort of investment flowing into the UK, we have the industry feels like it's reaching a bit of a crossroads and maybe I'm sort of dramatizing that a little bit because I don't think we're really at crossroads that implies that there are sort of two choices. But certainly there is challenge coming through in industry.

We have the Clean Power twenty thirty mission which is almost aggressive and perhaps perhaps not achievable versus the sort of business as usual. And I might sort of add on that the business as usual is kind of being rebranded as Cheaper Power twenty thirty and the Tony Blair Institute did a piece on this, which is is sort of starting to sort of highlight what that might look like. How how do you see the balance of those two? So how do you see the sort of the ambition of Clean Power twenty thirty versus the sort of necessity for Cheaper Power twenty thirty?

I think that Clean Power two thousand and thirty is really ambitious and bold, you know, the chief exec of the National Energy System Operator described it as a herculean task but I also think it's an agenda that's all about delivery and it is a target with timelines and it is really focused on how you can give certainty to investors so that the UK is an attractive place to put money, that we are really focused on decarbonising power and slashing costs. I do think that we should be looking at this as an opportunity to bring down bills in the long term and we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that clean power will, in the long term, lead to stable bills.

Think that's really, really important. It is ambitious. It has brought industry and government together. I think that is a really, really important thing to note and the target, you talked about kind of what would a business as usual sort of approach be.

I think we don't really want a business as usual approach to creep back in. I think this ambition has to be matched with credible policy change, which is kind of some of what we've talked about already and that policy change needs a really, really clear line to delivery. So, of the things that I think we need to make sure we continue to push for, and we will be as an industry, are like really clear auction pipelines with really ambitious pots for the CFDs. I think we need planning and grid reform to stay really, really high on the agenda, expanding business models for low carbon demand side tech.

So, you know, you mentioned that we've had lots of rumors about the warm home plan. I think the warm home plan is fundamental to so much of this because whilst when we talk about clean power, the focus is on power generation, rightly so, there's obviously two other really big strands. One is grid reform and connections reform and the other is demand and that warm home plan and things like the boiler upgrade scheme which incentivizes clean heat and their kind of funding for heat networks, which is all about actually how you can diversify different forms of clean heat in different areas where it's appropriate.

All of that is really, really important. So holding so many big big pieces up is is the challenge.

Yeah. I really like your focus on execution actually. I think that, you know, can we sort of stick the landing of it? Connections reform is a perfect example of that where Yes.

Is. Yeah. Needed certainly. But when we look at, for example, projects trying to deliver in twenty twenty six, the time between now getting those grid offers completed and being able to actually deliver those projects in twenty twenty six is now starting to look quite tight.

And there are a lot of people working very hard on this and it's not to say that that it's not being done appropriately because that's not to what I'm trying to say, but it's like when you try and do things quickly and you try and do things in a squeeze space, I think your point around execution is probably where the focus needs to be.

Yeah. Absolutely. And, look, you know, there is a role for industry here. This isn't all about sort of laying laying the blame on on the policy side of things and decisions from government. I think this government in its initial, what are we, like, fifteen months in since the general election, has delivered an awful lot, an awful lot of really positive change and we have been really supportive of things like the Planning and Infrastructure Bill.

You know, it is bold and we need bold if we're going to be able to actually deliver against these quite stretching targets.

And to give people a one liner on the planning and infrastructure bill, what does that mean to to most people?

So there's a lot of red tape when it comes to trying to build trying to build clean power generation assets and also kind of thinking about how you're where how and where you put infrastructure. So the planning and infrastructure bill is all about reducing that burden both for businesses but also for government.

Okay. Makes sense.

We've obviously talked about a large amount of investment required. The industry very much had a long debate around national pricing versus locational pricing. When the decision came out to run at reform national pricing, there was a I think you you were welcoming of the decision.

Do you still hold confidence in the tools of a reform national pricing, things like strategic spatial energy planning and amendments to network charges to deliver locational benefits promised?

So I think that there are clear challenges when it comes to the delivery of an effective spatial energy plan because it's the first time we're doing it. You know, we're trying to set out where technology and infrastructure are needed, in what parts of the UK and how and when things come on board. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do and honestly, I think we have to have a really transparent approach to this because it's all about having the right information and data in the system to make the right calls on where things should be and how and when they're bought in. So, that's where I think we are on the sort of spatial strategic planning side of things.

I think that network charging reform, we still need to have the price signal be reflective of the actual costs in the system and to make sure that we are delivering the network and maintaining it, it is really crucial that we are kind of keeping that pipeline flowing because some big decisions are coming around how and when you build and what we're going to do there. But reforming network charging, developing the level of certainty that a spatial plan can provide and ensuring that these price signals are accurate, you know, getting the market right, getting the mechanisms right, getting the policy levers aligned, the system should be better organised, it should be cost efficient and it should be better suited to that changing nature of supply and demand because we are dramatically changing the way that we kind of our energy system in the UK, aren't we?

We're moving from a handful of firm power to more intermittent renewable storage but it's not just that that's changing, it's hopefully we're also going to be changing how we use that power. So these are all big changes and unless we have a kind of a clear, sensible, transparent approach when we're doing the planning, I'm not sure if everybody will have confidence, right? And I think that's what we need is that we're going through the detail of how it will be delivered, industries feeding into those processes, it cannot be done by government alone, it cannot be done by the national energy system operator alone it cannot be done by industry alone.

So there's a recurring theme, I feel, to our discussion today and it is that partnership theme. Think, you know, we're moving into a space where the relationship between industry, government, regulator, consumer groups, the changing governance in the energy system, you know, we've got NISO now, we've also got National Wealth Fund, we've also got GB Energy, we've got the data communications company with the kind of digital infrastructure as well. Things are changing and we have to be alive to that and make sure we're keeping an eye on that it's all working properly.

Yeah. This is going in a really interesting direction actually.

Just just to kind of wrap up on your point about reform national pricing, as you say, it only works well when the the the so if you take decisions away from markets and away from pricing, you put it in the hands of a a smaller group. It only really works when they are being super transparent and can listen to sort of what's being said. And so the stories that I hear back that really sort of make me feel happy are things around things like a developer goes in to talk to a particular group and says, by the way, your modeling says this. We've done our own modeling and we think it actually says this.

Would you mind having another look? And the stories of, yes, we will. We'll take a look at that and we will amend our plans because actually what you said, so we are prepared to admit that as a small group we've got that thing wrong and we're willing to be flexible and transparent about it. That I think I think that is when it works well.

I think when it works badly is that those lines of sort of openness and the willingness to admit error go wrong or sorry, don't exist and then then I think it can go can go quite sort of far wrong.

Yeah. And I think you could go further really with that sort of an that sort of way of describing it in that, you know, as an industry, our view is it's in nobody's interest to kind of share a load of information, it all goes into a black box and then something spit is spat out at the end and you know something's gone wrong, but you can't really quite unpick it and understand it. I'm very proud that in the energy industry, we have so many brilliant, smart brains, right? We have so many different people working across this data information security space that we can give a lot, I think, and so it is about partnership because I don't think that any one actor could do this alone.

Yeah. The the energy industry has a very large number of bodies already. Yes. Is. And you're you're mentioning that we have things like National Wealth Fund coming through as well as things like GB Energy. Do you worry at all that some of those are sort of well intentioned but perhaps is too much sort of growth in terms of the number of industry bodies that we have? And actually, maybe this would all just be easier if we put, say, that money into, say, the Wilmholtz discount.

I think it would be a very blunt tool if I was to just base it on the numbers or, you know, however many is too much. I think that actually they all have discrete roles, but the problem is they often also overlap. And I think it's the overlaps is where we need more clarity.

I definitely think that the warm home plan needs to be maintained because we've talked about so many of the reasons that, you know, we don't wanna lose the funding in that space because it would kill swathes of industry where we, you know, businesses are geared up to deliver against this plan that we've been promised. But to your point on governance, I think it's about making sure that we don't allow a proliferation of red tape and I think that's the issue that business industry will be most interested in guarding against. There is a disconnect, I think, in government between the push from the treasury, DBT number ten on reducing red tape and reducing the burden of specifically regulation, but I'm using red tape more broadly and the kind of the approach that I think we're seeing in energy. That's not to say that all of these bodies do have a role, but let's make sure we don't take our eye off kind of being really clear about what those roles are.

Okay. Okay. I I I'm following and I think I'm gonna bring an NGUK stat into this. Yes. And I'm not sure, maybe I'm misquoting it to you, but let's talk about Ofgem very briefly. Yeah. So I think the quote goes, with ten thousand pages of energy industry codes more than four times the length of the complete works of Shakespeare, should or could Ofgem be reshaped?

Yeah. Look, I I think the first thing to say about Ofgem is I fully recognize that the regulator has an incredibly complex job. It is a system that is changing dramatically. We've talked a lot about how it's changing, and the regulator's role has changed so much over the years.

It's certainly our view that if the government's number one priority is growth, then reducing the amount of burdensome regulation in the energy industry is a really important part of achieving that goal when it comes to energy. And so, we are talking about the burden of codes. It's lengthy, it's complex, it doesn't need to be so lengthy and complex, but I think there is a, you could almost describe it as a bit of a tension between the role of the economic regulator and that kind of customer protection focus and so what we're calling for is a consideration of, you know, would it be better to split that up and have economic regulations stay with Ofgem and consider how the Competition and Market Authority could look at the customer protection side of things and that includes, you know, administering all the different schemes in the industry and the kind of customer facing license conditions, billing debt, that sort of thing.

Right now, you know, we have been living through many years of, you know, really kind of complex, what we talked about earlier, you know, requests for information and then no response for months on end on what's happening with it. Quite burdensome asks on industry, on an industry that's already struggling and has actually, to their credit, the energy suppliers have had a record year when it comes to customer satisfaction, you know.

Customers are happier than they've ever been with their energy suppliers in terms of customer service and support. So there is it is important that we are thinking about that because also it ends up costing more money. It's twice as expensive to serve an energy account in the UK as it is in France. And I know that there's a different merit order in France and I know that the job is different in France but it's about the fact that actually this has an impact on investment, it has an impact on investor confidence when it comes to putting money in the UK energy sector.

It's a fascinating overview of some of the areas that sit outside of the the things that you would initially think about when you think about the energy market. I'm gonna move us on to our final two questions. So is there something you'd like to plug?

Yes. Thank you. There's always things I'd like to plug. I think your listeners would be particularly interested in two things and cheekily suggest two things.

One is that at Energy UK, we regularly run every quarter, we have a lightning bolt talks which are really, really kind of data driven, short presentation, quick Q and A and lots of networking in a pub, in an accessible pub in London and they are such a great vibe. So if anyone's ever interested in that, very welcome to kind of look on our website and sign up for those. And the other is our young energy professionals work. Anyone who's worked in the industry for ten years or fewer or is interested in joining the energy industry, if you wanna learn more about, you know, getting involved in young energy professionals, it's a great way to meet people.

It's also a great way to do things site visits. They go to things like the NISO control room.

I think those are two fantastic plugs. And as a former young NG professional myself, I would say, yes, that makes a whole lot of sense. Definitely go to it. Definitely take those opportunities. And just they're fantastic for sort of your breadth as well.

So if you are just new to the energy sector, those are really good ways of being able to meet a few people in other organizations and just sort of setting yourself up for career in energy.

And they're doing some really great stuff, and we'll focus on kind of apprentices and things as well. So it's it's not just about people who are based in the southeast and it's not just about people who are in the policies, regulatory, comm space, it's about everything and I'm really proud of the work that they do. It's one of the most uplifting things that we do.

Agreed.

You know, Ed, that you are actually now a nope, a now old professional in energy, but you are in good company as I am once.

Very good. I'm I'm I'm proud to proud to be now old.

That's I mean, that ten year cutoff, we just need to extend it.

Yeah. I mean, we we actually do get lots of calls for kind of what do we do if we've been in the industry for longer than ten years. Lots of people do ask us, and I'm seriously thinking about starting a nope club.

I would like to think that it was kind of it's in a room with very, very quiet music.

Yeah. Yeah. Quiet music, Sherry. Yes.

There's a few games of bridge going on in the corner.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Very good. Let's move on to that contrarian view. So what's a contrarian view that you hold?

So I think in a world where people feel compelled to, you know, pin their colors to their mast and take strong views on one side of a debate or the other, I my contrarian view is that I am really really committed to navigating the gray space between the black and the white because I actually think that is the way that we will make progress and it is through conversation, it is through engagement and it's through understanding other people's points of view. So that's how we're gonna make progress when it comes to the energy transition.

I I love this contrarian view because the the way that sort of social media works is almost pushes people to be sort of further right or further left. And so that that sort of moderate censor just seems to have vanished so so quickly that actually sensible discussion and progress that comes out of sensible discussion seems to be so rare.

And you know, we haven't talked about and I and I thank you for this that you haven't raised, you know, what's your view on the factoring political consensus? Because I am asked about that on a daily basis. Now I think that actually we have a really interesting country, society, economy.

We are a wealthy country. We should be able to make it so that energy is cheap and abundant. We are smart. We have lots of potential for export.

We have led the world when it came to decarbonizing our power sector. There is so much optimism and potential for what we could do in this country, and yet we always focus on the negative. And people want to support action on climate change, to tackle climate change. You know, over eighty percent of people consistently poll on wanting to support the UK taking action to tackle climate change.

I think that's really positive and we should talk about that more.

That is a fantastic place to leave it. Dara, thank you for coming on. You've been a fantastic guest.

Thank you so much for having me.