Further anger over energy firms’ profits
February 28, 2008
Just days after British Gas delivered its customers with a slap in the face, announcing that profits had increased five fold since last year, whilst consumers were struggling to pay rising energy bills, another energy giant Npower has also delivered news of soaring profits, leaving even more customers seething over the fact that whilst they are risking being pushed into fuel poverty the energy firm bosses are sitting pretty with huge bonuses on the way.
Following the recent British Gas announcement that profits had soared from £95 million in the previous year to over £570 million for this year, one campaigner had stated: ‘It’s quite sickening when companies make these huge profits while, at the same time, we are expecting 25,000 excess winter deaths as a result of people not being able to keep warm.’
Following the Npower announcement an Energywatch official said: ‘These companies are making very healthy profits for shareholders but they are not healthy for customers.’
However, Npower officials state that the rise in profits comes from its power stations rather than from its customers, with official stating: ‘We saw major performance improvements from our power stations in 2007 - which gave us an acceptable level of profit for the first time since 2003, even though our retail business actually had a very difficult year. Older power stations are closing and we need to invest in new stations to guarantee power supplies. Our new power station at Staythorpe will cost more than our entire UK profit in 2007.’
The major energy suppliers started announcing news of rising costs at the end of last year, and within the first few weeks of this year a number of these suppliers had already raised costs by a significant level blaming increases in the cost of wholesale energy.
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