ENERGY giant SSE is urging the UK Government to introduce a national system of electricity pricing to ensure households are paying the same regardless of their location.
Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE, has written to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey, urging him and his department to consider the merits of a move away from the present regime of regional pricing.
He said his letter followed "media and political interest," particularly in Scotland, in the fact that all electricity suppliers face different costs for transporting electricity to different parts of the country, so charge varying prices.
There are currently 14 pricing regions across the British electricity market and customers in the Highlands and Islands pay two pence a unit more for their electricity than do other parts of the country.
The Western Isles Poverty Action Group (PAG) has recently described this as a national disgrace, given the Outer Hebrides have the highest fuel poverty figures in Scotland.
In his letter, Mr Phillips-Davies writes that companies operating in areas such as northern Scotland are "always going to face larger costs per customer because these are large land masses with diverse terrain and remote housing."
But he said that under national pricing, power companies should not lose out.
"The network companies would receive the same income for their necessary maintenance and investment work, but the costs would be spread across all regions, resulting in an end to this. This would make things far simpler for customers by reducing tariff complexity, as well as addressing these public concerns.
"To make these changes requires legislative or regulatory change. I hope that you will consider this issue."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article