NUCLEAR power stations have been given the nod by our Government as it wrestles to tackle the challenges of securing our energy supplies in the coming decades.
It’s understandable that the nuclear option has been so widely and fiercely debated in recent months. Sanctioning the design and building of I new nuclear power plants does after all amount to a fundamental shift in UK energy policy. And going nuclear is a big step for many Labour Party members too.
Putting aside the admittedly huge and important questions about how our future energy supplies are to be generated, there are some pretty important issues facing the SME sector in terms of energy provision too.
According to the Federation of Small Businesses, the needs of small firms have for too long been overlooked when decisions are taken over the future of UK power supplies.
To date, says the Federation, the debate has tended to focus on larger users of energy and domestic consumers. Outside this loop lie the UK’s SME sector and its 13 million employees.
By anyone’s reckoning that is a significant number of people. Certainly, too many to be written off or left to feel disengaged from such a critical debate and process.
The FSB says it broadly supports the Government’s recently published Energy Review. Note the word “broadly” there. Support may be forthcoming, but the Government would be unwise to bank on getting it for nothing.
It’s interesting to see and hear, via the FSB, where their members feel the hardest handicap in the energy stakes.
They are campaigning for recognition of the special position of small firms in the energy market. These firms, it’s said, are under particular strain in a volatile energy market, Adding to the gravity of the situation are unclear pricing policies for small firms (without the buying power clout of a bigger businesses, especially in the manufacturing sector) and poor standards of service from some gas and electricity suppliers.
Interestingly, small firms say they do not enjoy the regulatory safeguards that domestic users receive. Nor can such smaller businesses afford or justify retaining n house energy experts in the same way as major consumers can. Although an expert who can identify and implement energy efficiencies may soon turn out to be worth his or her weight in savings.
For those 13 million people working in the SME sector, these are important issues. It would be reassuring to think the Government would take note of what is being said from this quarter. In other words, broaden the debate so that small firms and their representatives are included along with strong consumer lobbies and the big guns of British industry.
If Ministers choose not to listen they may find energy use dropping for all the wrong reasons. After all, firms driven out of business don’t use gas and electricity. Let’s not hear a chorus of last one out switch the lights off.
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