ROOF Blog

With demand for gas rising sharply, Britain’s gas reserves are running low, meaning the country is more reliant on imported gas bought on the international market. Imported energy is more expensive, and rising demand across Europe this week caused natural gas prices to jump to their highest level in 10 months. That triggered warnings from energy analysts that power companies may use the cold snap as justification for another increase in domestic bills. Tom Foulkes, director general of the Institution of Civil Engineers said: ‘To avoid energy crises and price hikes in the future the UK energy sector must urgently build extra gas storage capacity into the network. We simply cannot continue to rely on unpredictable overseas supplies’.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have successfully prosecuted a housing society and a plumber following a boiler explosion that killed a tenant. Prosecution proceedings were started after tenant Christine Goodall, 65, was killed at her home in Gloucestershire in 2007 when an incorrectly decommissioned boiler exploded. The fatal incident occurred when Mrs Goodall lit a fire for the first time since the back boiler had been decommissioned in 1999.

The government has unveiled its vision of hi-tech homes with ‘smart’ meters acting as a cornerstone of a more efficient, greener electricity grid system.

British Gas and other power suppliers have been given responsibility for installing meters in each of Britain’s 26m homes by 2020, enabling them to read consumption levels remotely and end the use of estimated bills.

The gadgets would also allow homeowners to monitor their own gas and electricity usage – and production if they have solar panels or wind turbines.

However, a row over the £8.5bn outlay for smart meters threatened to overshadow the announcement with critics warning that the energy companies might pocket the benefits.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the cost of the scheme would be dwarfed by the £14.5bn of expected savings as power companies reduce administrative costs and consumers benefit from lower bills.

The number of households in fuel poverty, where at least 10 per cent of income is spent on gas and electricity, rose by 15 per cent to four million in 2007, statistics from the Department for Energy and Climate Change show. A projection for this year suggests there are 6.6 million British homes in fuel poverty, almost treble the number five years ago. Campaigners said ministers would miss their target of removing all households containing the elderly, disabled and poor from fuel poverty by next year. The biggest factor in the increase is the doubling of energy prices since 2002. Responding to these figures, the government announced a four-step plan to help the fuel poor, including forcing suppliers to increase insulation, funding energy efficiency makeovers for 90,000 homes, making social tariffs compulsory and toughening regulation to combat ‘market abuse’.