Giving our customers a voice on CRC

We submit our customers' views to government

Download the report

npower has been working hard over the past year or so to give our customers a voice within the energy industry. In 2011 we published reports based on customers’ views on Electricity Market Reform, or EMR, and the energy Red Tape Challenge, launched by government in November 2011. These reports have really started to be noticed within Government and Wayne Mitchell, Industrial & Commercial Markets director, was asked to the Houses of Parliament last year to present our customers’ views during a meeting held by Energy Minister Charles Hendry.

A key piece of legislation affecting a large number of our business customers is the Carbon Reduction Commitment Energy Efficiency Scheme, or CRC. The aim of the scheme is to encourage these types of customers to become more aware of the energy they use and promote energy efficiency. It has however been widely criticised for being very difficult to understand and complex for our customers to administrate.

In response to this criticism, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published some proposals as to how they could relieve some of the burden posed by CRC at the end of March. Stakeholders were encouraged to provide feedback on their proposals and we saw this as an excellent opportunity to help our customers get their voices heard in government.

We therefore ran two customer events:

1. A round table discussion on 30th April
2. A webinar on 25th May

Over 50 of our customers contributed to these events and the results are contained within the attached report. This has been submitted to DECC within the consultation along with npower's own response. We know that our customers really value this type of support from us and are proud of the way we partner our business customers.