Scots could have some of Europe’s ‘cheapest energy’ under new plans
THE boss of an energy company has said switching to zonal pricing would give Scotland some of the “cheapest electricity in Europe”. UK Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho set out proposed measures to switch to zonal pricing for electricity yesterday.
Under a zonal pricing system, consumers would pay less for their electricity the closer they live to the infrastructure generating it, such as wind farms.
Speaking about the proposed changes on Radio 4, Octopus Energy chief executive Greg Jackson said zonal pricing would help attract businesses to Scotland, where the energy is cheapest.
“Today we’ve got this crazy electricity market where the price of electricity is usually set by gas [prices],” he said.
“You’ve got a single national price. For example, there’s a 10-year moratorium on building data centres to the west of London.
“But, if we could use that cheap renewable power in Scotland to give cheap electricity to data centres, they’d leave the queue here [in London], reducing the demand for power year, we spent £3 billion pounds – and the year before £4bn – turning off windfarms when it’s windy, paying people to not generate, because we couldn’t shift the electricity to where the demand was.
“If you change the price, you get more demand in the regions it’s cheap. Things like data centres or heavy industries will usually move there.
“This is what they do in Scandinavia and they’ve seen huge success. Scotland, parts of England, Wales, would have some of the cheapest electricity in Europe.
“And you’d see industry coming back that’s been leaving these shores.”
However, Jackson was pressed once again about whether “customers in London and the south of England would have to accept that they’re paying more than those parts of Wales and Scotland that you’re talking about?”
The energy boss said the system was already unfair to Scottish consumers and that zonal pricing would help rebalance the market.
He went on: “Today, isn’t it crazy that Scotland and poorer parts of England and Wales have got the highest standing charges?
“So, they generate the most elec