An energy company’s financial results rightly attract scrutiny but you tend to find the media headlines focus on profits with little mention of what we actually do with the money.
Today we’ve made our half-year statement to the City which sets out how the company has performed. In a business like energy there are many fluctuations in the year, primarily because so much of our job is weather related, and for that reason we focus on our performance over the full 12 months.
We’ve had a solid start to the year with our businesses returning to a more typical level of profit following a difficult time over a similar period last year.
What this means is that we are in a strong position to invest in the much needed upgrading of the UK’s energy infrastructure. Today we’ve announced that in the last six months we’ve invested a staggering three quarters of a billion pounds in building new power stations, upgrading our existing gas fired plants to make them more flexible and building new lines and wires to ferry electricity around the country.
To put that in context that’s one and a half times more than we’ve earned in profit in the last six months. And it is just part of a £5.5bn investment programme we’re taking forward to 2018.
From the new multi-fuel plant we’ve opened at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire to starting work on the largest ever capital project we’ve undertaken building a new transmission line under the sea between Caithness and Moray, we’re helping make Britain’s energy infrastructure fit for the future.
This investment is driving skilled jobs in communities across the UK: Around 106,000 people were employed by SSE, its supply chain and associated businesses in the last year. For every person employed by SSE we supported 4.6 jobs elsewhere in the UK.
It is contributing to economic growth: nearly £9bn in 2014/15 alone. And it’s also contributing to the UK purse with £1.5bn paid in taxes in the last three years – a major contribution to public services.
We also do business in the right way. Our Fair Tax Mark accreditation means you can be confident we pay the right amount, at the right time and in the right way. And every single person employed by SSE is paid at least the Living Wage and any contractors working regularly on our sites are too.
The UK Government’s national infrastructure commission is looking independently at Britain’s long-term infrastructure needs, overseeing a promised £100bn of spending by 2020. SSE will have invested over 5% of this figure on its own by 2018.
And at the same time we are delivering every day for customers, on price, on products and importantly on customer service. Cutting prices twice in 13 months, launching low fixed tariffs available to all our customers, free broadband and boiler cover not to mention coming top of the largest 18 suppliers on service.
Whilst media headlines may focus on profits alone, our business is focused on how that money is put to work for the UK.