At Distributed Energy Futures we spend a lot of time talking to some of the big energy players. We recently had a very animated conversation with a senior executive from Shell, which, back in August announced its intention to enter the UK electricity market (Link here). The benefits to Shell in doing so have been widely debated – but clearly represents a threat to the incumbent UK energy retailers. Just at a time when their domestic retail markets are threatened by government talk of price caps and having to bear the cost of Smart meter roll-out, their industrial markets come under threat from an extremely credible new entrant!
However what really chimed, was his comment on the personal impact of market change. “Anyone in this industry” he said “whose job is not changing should be really worried”. He is, of course, right. Those of us who’ve come through the last 25 years since privatisation think we are pretty used to change. I suspect we haven’t seen anything yet.