ENERGY giant npower announced they reaped in more than £400 million in profits (a 34% increase) last year, despite hitting customers with crippling bill increases.
They follow British Gas, who announced the cold winter lead to extra consumer gas consumption and a whopping extra £606m in profit.
Npower increased gas prices by 8.8 per cent and electricity prices by 9.1 per cent last November, pushing up its average dual fuel bill by £108 to £1,352 a year.
A spokesperson for www.theecoexperts.co.uk said: “Like British Gas customers last week, I expect a lot of npower customers will be wanting some answers. Many of them will want to know why they are having to make the decision between buying food or heating their homes, yet npower bigwigs are going home with millions of pounds in profit.
“Ed Davey, the Climate Change Secretary, said today there was no way the government could regulate energy prices in a global market. This means they can or will do very little to stop this. The only way for households to stop paying these extortionate fees is to use less energy, or create their own, or both.”
A spokesperson for npower’s parent company RWE said the rise in UK operating profit was the result of efficiency improvements and higher gas sales volumes and power station profit margins actually declined from 2011 to 2012.
Speaking at EcoBuild in London yesterday (March 5), Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey said: “Domestic gas prices increased by an average of just under 8% in the last months of 2012, on the back of sustained rises over the last 5 years and with the economic situation as it is, we have to help people who are struggling to keep up.
“The Government can’t control wholesale prices in a global market, when gas demand is booming to fuel emerging economies like India and China, replacing the nuclear power Japan turned off, when even the shale gas revolution won’t get global gas prices lower.
“The best way to help the fuel poor in Britain and to help those facing higher energy bills be they people or businesses, is to reduce the amount of energy they need to use.”
