France’s Engie, formerly known as GDF Suez, is poised to take on Britain’s big six power suppliers by launching a new tariff that tracks the wholesale power price. The new deal, aimed at households, will display the market price for gas and electricity transparently and will be coupled with offers relating to smart meters and energy efficiency. Kocher has a plan to ensure her company is not tarred with the same brush that has coated rivals from Centrica to SSE and dented their share prices. Part of the scheme will be a new tariff for households that transparently tracks wholesale power prices. To have a tariff “embedded with the wholesale price and to make that very visible” will be a “bullet” for the big six, she says. “We won’t do it the same way.” It will be coupled with a broader strategy of supplying services to cities, such as deals with companies and councils to cut power consumption and reduce emissions. In March, Engie paid £330m for a Doncaster-based regeneration business, Keepmoat, to help deliver the plan. Engie is the energy monster few consumers have heard of. Its operations span the Olympic park in east London to a vast hydroelectric dam in north Wales, and it employs about 20,000 staff in the UK.
Times 30th April 2017 read more »