Jumat, 11 Mei 2012

Energy bills warning for the winter as Centrica says its costs are climbing

Energy bills warning for the winter as Centrica says its costs are climbing

By Harry Glass

PUBLISHED: 03:38 EST, 11 May 2012 | UPDATED: 10:32 EST, 11 May 2012

Energy price hikes are on the cards as British Gas owner Centrica warned its costs are spiralling - which usually means that customers are in line for painful repercussions on their bills.

It said wholesale gas costs would be 15 per cent higher for next winter, while other costs would add another £50 to the cost of supplying energy to the average home.

Centrica said transport and distribution, metering, green levies and social costs were all up.

gas hob

Gas mask: Round of price reductions by major suppliers in 2012 were not enough to offset price hikes over previous months, with utility bills driving up inflation

The UK's biggest energy supplier dropped its standard electricity tariff by 5 per cent at the start of 2012 - but that came after a 16% rise in electricity prices and an 18% rise in gas prices for British Gas customers in August last year.

Tom Lyon, energy expert at uSwitch.com, says: 'This is deeply worrying as consumers are still struggling to come to terms with the £224 or 21 per cent increase in bills from the end of 2010 and only enjoyed a £41 or 3.2 per cent reduction at the beginning of this year. We would urge all suppliers to hold fire for as long as possible.

'For consumers, it’s clear that suppliers are warning of trouble ahead. I would urge them to prepare for the worst and to ensure that they are on a competitively priced energy plan and to make their homes as energy efficient as possible by taking up one of the many subsidised insulation offers available on the market.'

Earlier this week experts warned fuel bills would be hit this winter by a possible 28 per cent wholesale gas price rise due to the 2011 Japanese earthquake.

Because of that catastrophe, dozens of tankers with supplies of liquified natural gas are still being diverted to shore up the country's energy supply while its nuclear reactors are shut down.

Centrica's warning came as it said its own trading this year was in line with expectations, as higher wholesale gas and power prices benefited its 'upstream' operations.

This helped offset the effect of mild weather and energy-saving initiatives in the first quarter. Cold and wet weather then boosted demand in April, leaving average domestic gas consumption in the first four months of the year 1 per cent higher than a year ago, although electricity was down 3 per cent.

Residential customer numbers were broadly unchanged from the start of the year, helped by January's tariff cut, which it said re-established it as the cheapest major electricity supplier in Britain.

Its business customers' average gas and electricity consumption was down by 1 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, and its profit margins were under pressure amid the recession.

A round of price reductions by the UK's major suppliers earlier this year were not enough to offset price hikes over previous months, and utility bills have been a driver of the rising cost of living that has squeezed households.

British Gas, which has 15.9 million residential customers, increased gas bills by 18 per cent and electricity by 16 per cent in August.

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Just fixed my tariff for the next three years! You could too and having nothing to moan about!

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Here we go the yearly rip off !

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We need to see the environmental stealth taxes itemised separately on our energy bills. The cost of gas is a commercial decision because we have to buy gas from abroad. The cost of the green revolution is something that our politicans decide but we should be told what that cost is.

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If they could just put their money where their mouths are. Unfortunately, they get rewarded with top bonuses irrespective of their performance, it shouldn't be tied to upward trending commodity prices. Unlikely if they would get a reduction in pay when commodity prices were to fall...

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these yearly extortionate increases should be clamped down on and investigated. i wonder how much of these increases is a result of so called green taxes. climate change the biggest rip off of the century

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Comments NOT posted!!!copy/paste “When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a LEGAL system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”Frederic Bastiat - (1801-1850) "The powers of financial capitalism has another FAR reaching aim. Nothing less than to create a world system of financial CONTROL in PRIVATE hands able to DOMINATE the political system of each country the economy of the world as a whole""If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”J oseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda

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This industry is out of control. It all needs to be taken apart and rebuilt from scratch.

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'The government should start fast tracking shale gas exploration, if by all accounts there are vast amounts under our feet.' - paul, london, 11/5/2012 14:40 As long as it's not beneath the feet of Londoners who won't be subjected to the increased risk of earthquake or have methane coming out of their taps with the contaminated groundwater?

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But we were told that inflation is coming down becasue fuel prices are going lower! The truth is that we buy fuel on the world market and our currency is devalued by all the QE Merv did. So get used to everything that comes from abroad going up in price for the forseeable future.

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look in the director dealings BG director has spent 300,000 plus in shares says it all don't it

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