Thursday 31 October 2013

Fixed energy contracts have "hidden costs"

Energy contracts that are fixed “are not what they claim to be” and could have “hidden costs” attached to them.

That’s the warning from ENER-G Procurement, which suggests fixed contracts could include “third party charges” such as delivery network and environmental taxes and levies.

The firm is advising businesses to check the small print as prices could increase despite the “fixed price” product claim.

It suggests although wholesale energy price volatility has been blamed for rising bills, there are in fact a “long list of other charges” that are also to blame that make up almost half of those bills.

“Most organisations could cite the Climate Change Levy as an additional expense on their bill but what about the others? The Renewable Obligation, Transmission Network Use of System charge and Feed-in Tariffs are other third party charges which can often be unidentifiable in your bill and are set to continue to increase,” says Mark Alston, Director of the firm.

ENER-G will be offering advice at the Energy Live 2013 conference next Thursday.