Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brearley's keynote speech to the 2024 Energy UK Annual Conference

Thank you Emma for inviting me; I am delighted to be here for my fourth appearance as CEO of Ofgem. I’m really pleased again to be speaking to you all again about the changes that we need to see.

Fintan [Slye, CEO, National Grid ESO] and I didn’t coordinate speeches, but actually they fit quite neatly together. Because I also want to talk about our industry and what we are trying to do over the next few years, but I want to come at it from a slightly different angle.

So for those of you who don’t know, one of the things I have learnt to do in my role is to periodically - as much as I can, call a customer directly and ask him or her some very basic questions - quite simply - what do you think of the energy system around you? And what do you want from it?

My last call was just before we announced we were increasing the price cap. I spoke to a single mother in Glasgow and she had lots of feedback about the industry - I won’t dwell on that; what I will try to describe is what she said she wanted. In particular two things. She said ‘I want an end to these prices that are constantly changing.’ And ‘I want a company that cares about you.’

When I think about our high ambition and what we are trying to achieve, that encapsulates a lot of what we were talking about earlier today.

Unusually for a regulator, I want to talk about progress. I want to start by celebrating some success and some progress that we have made. I look at the numbers, I look at the data, and although there is a lot to do, we are beginning to see customer satisfaction overall in the sector rise.

And albeit that is from a very challenging place over the last few years, we are beginning to see a big change, and I recognise that a great deal of effort has gone into that, from the people in this room, particularly in the retail sector.

And equally, particularly under the leadership of a new government and its mission to get to clean power, we are seeing incredible dynamism across the sector, and indeed from within government and within the regulator, to make sure we can make progress towards the vision that Fintan has just laid out. And that is fantastic.

But equally, as a regulator you know that I am going to say this: there is so much more that we still need to do. So when we think about ambitions in this sector, I want to talk about changing customer satisfaction from where it used to be, when it was at a low point, and when all of us were struggling with the gas crisis.

I want the energy sector to be comparable with other sectors across the economy. I want us to have the best possible customer service that we can have. So for example I look at the comparative statistics, where we look compared to banking, or retail, it is clear there is still a long way to go. But I think we should have that high ambition when compared to others.

Now when Fintan talked about the history of thirty years ago, I got a slight shock. I realised that was when I started my career! Now I haven’t spent all of it in energy, but I have spent a lot of it in energy. And there are some myths that I think have become embedded in the way we talk about these things.

So when I talked to a CEO even fifteen years ago in retail, and I asked her about customers satisfaction, she said ‘well, with the politics around this, we are never going to be comparable to other sectors.’ ?I would like to challenge that. If we look at banking ten or fifteen years ago, and you look now at how customers now rate their service.

Equally today we have talked a lot about the difficulties of getting infrastructure built, and talked a lot about the challenges around the transition. It is great to hear from Fintan today he thinks it is possible to make the transition by 2030. And my observation is that there is a huge amount to deliver to do so.

So when we think about what we are trying to achieve, we need to keep that lodestar – of companies that care about you, and prices that are far more stable than they are today.

A couple of weeks ago we issued something called Consumer Confidence, and this was really all about us as a regulator being clear about the outcomes that we want to see. Being clear around the regulatory incentives, but most importantly it is when we began to set this ambition, to begin to lift the sector to where I think it should be, which is competing with other sectors on service and satisfaction levels from customers.

Now I accept, as I have said before, we know that the supplier licence is a very complex beast, we know that has been added to incrementally over time, and we know that while it is probably not quite right for customers, it is also probably not quite right for the companies involved.

So when we design this, we do not want to do it in the more traditional way, of designing something in a darkened room and issuing it to you all and asking for feedback. We would instead like to co-design this with the industry, and consumer groups as well. We are also interested in the approach that the FCA takes around a Consumer Duty – we want to explore that, not only for retailors but for everyone in the sector, including the networks, to see if that would fit with the kind of outcomes that we want to see. The last thing I want to say, we have talked a lot about retailors, but we also know that network companies are also very important for customers, particularly if something goes wrong.

Then we come to the other half of that challenge – that I know we have talked a lot about, and Ed [Miliband] described this morning, that clean power mission. Now for me, if we are going to go back to that customer we described, if we are going to deliver for her, it is fundamental that we make this change. You know that, that we in this room, have lived through two years of unimaginable stress for customers. I have spent those two years talking to customers, and I have had people on the phone literally in tears describing the impact these prices changes have had. I have seen the affect on business and on domestic customers.

So I am very clear in my mind that it is fully in customers’ interests that we make this transition. I am personally delighted that we are setting up NESO. Fintan and I have been talking about this for a number of years, so it is great to see it come to fruition. And I am looking forward to the leadership of Fintan and his team to make sure we have the plan that we need.

Having been in this industry for fifteen or sixteen years, I am also optimistic that we are likely to get there. I remember fifteen years ago when there was scepticism that the offshore wind industry would ever grow sufficiently. I used to get surveys and analysts telling me ninety per cent of people do not believe we are going to meet the renewables targets. And we achieved it – not only that, but we broke far through expectations on how much it would cost for customers. So I do not see why we can’t do that again: if we have a government, a sector, a regulator, NESO, and consumer groups working hard together to tackle problems and solve them.

I am going to end this almost where I started, let’s think about the customer that I spoke to, let’s think about how we can be a sector that competes with all other sectors in the economy in the way it treat its customers, and gets us to a place which is stable for customers, where they no longer rely on international gas prices, which let’s face it, we simply do not control. If we can do that, we will have done not only a good job for customers, but I believe put ourselves in a great place for the industry to be. And I look forward to working with all of you to achieve that.

ENDS.