Whilst some of this may sound familiar to many of you subscribed to our news feed, we probably need to keep highlighting the unfair nature of the non-competitive business electricity and gas markets so when the opportunity comes along to voice your opinion or push for change you are aware that it is still an issue yet to be addressed in fairness to business customers.

The media continue to provide a fairly continuous stream of doom and gloom about the domestic energy market, but what about the business users? If Torse clients are anything to go by, we’ve got a pretty disgruntled commercial base in the UK, that feels its needs are not being addressed. Whilst there will no doubt be accusations that this is a simplistic outlook and that energy suppliers aren’t making any money out of business electricity and gas customers, it is quite hard to match that with the reality of huge increases in supplier renewal contract costs, and the increasingly arduous process energy procurement has become. You don’t need to be an economist to know that an oligopoly of vertically integrated energy companies is not good for competition.

The energy intensive users as usual get their concessions, ‘without them where would the economy be?’ , direct phone lines to Ministers, whatever next. Makes you wonder who is running the country or whether this is just great lobbying.

Increased powers to OFGEM seems unlikely to frighten the larger players into action, and anyway you just put the fine back on the users bills. The talk of legislation to force the large energy producers to ‘give up’ 20% of their energy production to smaller/new suppliers sounds interesting, but we’ve not heard much more about it. There is also an extreme likelihood that this won’t sit well with the Right of the Coalition. The Bottom Line is Government [and Opposition] need to ‘big-up and stop kowtowing to those in perceived higher places, and sort out a rational and sound Energy Policy before it’s too late. Competition will help to manage the complex energy environment, but not if it is too big and out of control. If we don’t address things fundamentally and soon, we’ll end up with the nationalisation of the remnants of an asset stripped energy industry and a society without Energy sustainability for the future. Sounds extreme; have a look at Paul Kingsnorth’s rejuvenation of Leopold Kohr’s thoughts – This Economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’ [guardian.co.uk 25/09/11]