Leader: Fag packet sums do industry no favours

With the general election now firmly in view, the flurry of “statistics” is reaching fever pitch. Take this week’s report from Which?, where the consumer body claims to have “analysed movements in retail energy prices over the past two years in relation to commonly used hedging strategies”, and so come up with the figure of £2.9 billion that energy companies have apparently withheld from consumers over the past year. The science behind this number is anything but sound – presumably Which? has no better information on the energy companies’ hedging strategies, a closely guarded competitive secret, than the rest of us. Yet a few sums on the back of a fag packet generated a story that was on every radio show and in every newspaper on Tuesday morning; another hammer blow to the public perception of energy companies.

It’s not just Which? at it. Indeed, you can hardly blame the consumer body when the energy regulator itself is playing the same game. Energy UK’s Lawrence Slade came out guns blazing on the perennial bugbear of the Supply Market Indicator this week, calling on Ofgem to abandon the “wildly exaggerated” report. Good for him – let’s hope Ofgem’s top team of Dermot Nolan and David Gray is willing to finally move away from the regular publication of these misleading figures.

With all these contradictory numbers flying around, the public’s confusion and frustration with the energy industry are hardly surprising. Once the election is over and the industry is able to work with the new government to resolve this stand-off, impartial numbers that industry, politicians and public alike can believe in will be crucial.

• It might be hard to see beyond May at the moment, but as Jane Gray points out in this month’s Topic, utilities that fail to look further ahead could have a dismal future. With 70 per cent of a forecast 10 billion global population expected to live in cities by 2050, the urban conurbations in which we live and work are going to look very different indeed. If utilities want to play a part, the planning must start now. See p12.