Commenting on today’s Ofgem announcement outlining new proposals for the UK energy market, E.ON UK Chief Executive Michael Lewis said:

“We’ve got to take a cold, hard look at the energy market to understand what went wrong and to make sure we can stop this happening again. Customers are already facing steep rises in bills because of the sudden jump in wholesale energy costs, made worse by the added costs from the failure of more than a dozen energy companies.

“Today’s update from Ofgem is a welcome step in the right direction and I applaud the speed of their response. This is a positive move towards making sure only responsible companies can play a part in our energy future and in insulating customers from picking up the tab of bad businesses.”

Michael Lewis also commented on longer term ambitions for the future of the energy market, including ways to support homeowners in investing in a low carbon future.

He added: “There is so much more we can do for customers today, tomorrow and into coming decades, helping them to reduce bills and to meet our net zero targets. Removing the renewables levies from electricity bills into general taxation gives people an immediate £150 reduction in bills over winter, taking VAT off energy bills another £60.

“Thinking longer term – but the action needs to start today – the problem of decarbonising generation has been solved but the much bigger challenge is how we decarbonise downstream, how we take our customers on the journey to zero carbon. This is a much larger challenge for the simple fact we're talking about 30 million homes.

“The road to a zero-carbon future means we all need to make massive changes, and Government can play a role in incentivising people – to make the green choice the cheaper choice. Of course industry must step up and provide the products that customers want to buy, but Government can help by taxing the bad and rewarding the good, taking away the liabilities from customers and aggressively accelerating plans to net zero.

“Given the speed with which we need to work this is an enormous challenge. All of that has got to go in the next 30 years so we can't wait for a perfect solution we have to act now.”

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