Renewables top priority for business customers

Drax Retail eyes appetite as "fantastic" opportunity

Three quarters of small and medium sized (SME) business customers have said they’d like their supplier to do more to support the growth of renewable energy in the UK.

Drax Retail uncovered the appetite for sustainable energy services in a recent suvey aimed at understanding what smaller business users want from their energy.

Jonathan Kini, chief executive of Drax Retail, which includes Haven Power and Opus Energy, told Utility Week that customer focus on renewables provides a “fantastic opportunity” for the company. He said it will enable Drax to develop new business models, based on helping customers be more cut costs.

“I was with one of our largest customers yesterday and talking about total costs,” Kini commented. “Some companies will use the energy they buy and also energy they create. If we can get the partnership right and stop just having a tariff conversation, and say ‘how do we start to look at this in a different way’ I think new models with grow.”

Kini added that he bleives it will be “beholden on suppliers” to develop ways of promoting resilience in the b2b customer base, rather than sustaining transactional relationships.

He said that with some “super-sophisticated buyers” Drax has already established this kind of service-based partnership. In the future, the approach will spread into the SME base he argued.

In particular, Kini anticipated that SME customers will display a growing appetite for a combination of solar and battery storage “if the right deal can be constructed”.

“It’s not quite there yet,” he said. “But I can see in the next two or three years that being a normal conversation, and energy retailers will have to think about what their part is in that.”

Kini made his comments in an interview with Utility Week. Read the article in full here.