Scottish Power Plc

UK's Ofgem To Press On With Gas, Power Market Overhaul

LONDON -( Dow Jones )- U.K. energy regulator Ofgem Wednesday said it will press ahead with a radical overhaul of the U.K. retail gas and electricity market and also launched a probe into potential misleading marketing by Scottish Power, one of the U.K.'s six biggest utilities.

"Responses to our reforms show that there is increasing consensus across a range of consumer and business groups that in a period of rising energy prices energy suppliers have to transform the way they deal with consumers," Ofgem's chief executive, Alistair Buchanan, said in a statement. "This is why Ofgem is pressing ahead with its consultations to sweep away complex tariffs in order to expose energy suppliers' prices to consumer power."

He said the regulator would seek to break up the stranglehold that the U.K.'s big six utilities have on the electricity market to encourage new firms such as Co-op to enter the market and create more competition.

The big six utilities are Scottish Power, a unit of Spain's Iberdrola SA (IBE.MC); EDF Energy, a unit of Electricite de France (EDF.FR); Centrica PLC (CNA.LN); Scottish and Southern Energy PLC (SSE.LN); npower, a unit of Germany's RWE AG (RWEOY); and E.ON UK, a unit of Germany's E.ON (EONGY).

Ofgem also said it has launched an investigation into potentially misleading marketing by Scottish Power, marking another strong signal that the regulator wants to see a substantial change in the way customers are treated.

Scottish Power is also under investigation to see whether the difference between its Standard Credit and Direct Debit tariffs are cost reflective and, along with EDF Energy, npower, and SSE, as to whether the company has missold energy to customers.

Ofgem has concluded the consultation period and will now carry out further consumer testing of its proposals. By the end of the year, it will publish impact assessments alongside detailed proposals for consultation with a view to publishing its proposals in 2012 and then putting the reforms in place.

Orkney Becomes Test Bed for Wave and Tidal Power Technologies (UK ...

Beyond the portals of the European Marine Energy Centre, researchers are seeking to transform this island archipelago into a global hub of the renewable age. Situated where the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean collide, a maritime crossroads that Vikings featured in their sagas, companies such as EON AG and Iberdrola SA are drawn to Orkney as a test bed for the latest wave and tidal power technologies.

Nowhere in the world conducts more research into marine energy than Scotland, whose countrymen invented the telephone, steam engine and television. Scotland’s nationalist government aims to harness that talent for innovation to the country’s natural resources to lead the way on wave and tidal energy, just as Saudi Arabia has with global oil production.

“ We’re not trying to put the first Scot on the moon, this is doable