Ellen Bennett

Proposals submitted for Lerwick power station

Miliband’s price freeze not the best way to reform the market

Author warns climate risk blindness will cause next global crash

Failure to push smart water meters is lost opportunity

Sewerage is an asset, not the solution to a problem

Since privatisation, the logic of an integrated clean and dirty water enterprise structure has dominated in the water sector. This was underpinned by the logic of scale economies, so necessary to utilities originating in a public service ethos. Is that about to change? In the "dustbin" solid waste economy, disposal taxes will have increased the upper price ceiling of waste disposal from £7 per tonne in 1997 to £100 in 2013, powering a veritable explosion of new entrants offering alternatives to landfill. Unsurprisingly, this is creating a loop back to technology innovation embracing new bio, thermo, chemical and mechanical applications able to prosper at these higher rates of reward. The stimulus is not just fiscal, however.

When is tax and spend not tax and spend? When it’s pro-gas

One thing about sitting with your nose pressed very close to a book of legislative clauses for three weeks is that it gets you thinking about some of the more arcane bits of what is in front of you. There are several - ahem - fairly obscure bits of the upcoming legislation that I think are really going to cause trouble in the future - policy implications apart, which I may well set out for your delight in the near future. But for starters here's a continuing puzzle about how capacity payments are going to be viewed in the Energy Bill.

Who should pay, and what are they paying for?

Dummy – Week Ahead Briefing

Everything you need to know this week

Are water investors right to be nervous?

Reputations are worth building – and protecting

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to ruin it." So said US founding father Benjamin Franklin, and sadly for utilities, his words remain true today. As research carried out exclusively for Utility Week reveals, the perception of the big six energy suppliers among their customers goes from bad to worse. It takes just one badly handled communication or damning national media story to denigrate a utility provider in the eyes of a customer. That same customer rarely if ever appreciates the utility at the moment they flip the light switch or turn on the tap. Moreover, with utilities a grudge purchase and a political hot potato, the companies make convenient whipping boys, with politicians and national press ever ready to do some tub thumping.