SSE has a responsibility to help all our customers use less energy; and we’re building a business out of doing so.
In a world of rising energy costs using less energy is the most sustainable way to reduce the actual bill a customer pays. It also reduces the overall demand for energy; in turn reducing the carbon impact from generating energy and reducing the total energy capacity required to meet customers’ needs.
SSE has a strong track record in providing energy efficiency advice and solutions to its domestic customers. But this domestic consumption only accounts for around 50% of total gas and electricity consumption in the UK.
Our acquisition of the Energy Solutions Group, announced today, gives SSE a new level of expertise in providing this support to industrial and commercial customers.
ESG has traded for almost 20 years and is one of the largest energy solutions companies in the UK. It works with private and public sector customers to identify improvements in their management of energy consumption; and to install, maintain and support building management systems and solutions that support this.
In many acquisitions alleged synergies can be hard to identify, let alone quantify. That certainly isn’t the case with this deal. The acquisition of ESG provides improved service for our business customers and value for SSE in two fundamental ways.
ESG typically saves customers around 20% to 30% of their energy consumption. SSE is now able to offer this market-leading energy saving expertise to its 400,000+ business energy accounts, who already recognise and trust the high level of service SSE provides. For those customers who already know and trust ESG’s track record, ESG can now offer a wider package which includes a competitive supply contract.
SSE’s Contracting business is one of the UK’s largest electrical and mechanical contractors, involved in a wide range of commercial, industrial and public sector contracts across the UK and with specialist expertise in renewable generation and heat solutions. SSE’s relationship managers can now extend their offering to include ESG’s services and in turn ESG can offer the contracting team’s expertise to their customers.
So I firmly believe this deal will complement and enhance SSE’s services in the very competitive markets for industrial and commercial customers and will make a positive contribution almost immediately.
As stated in SSE’s financial results statement in May, these services – including electrical and mechanical contracting, lighting services, private energy networks and telecoms - are being brought together in an ‘Enterprise’ division to meet the energy and related needs of such customers in an enhanced and co-ordinated way. ESG will now also be an important component of this growing part of SSE’s business.