2008 has been a busy year completing Energy Efficiency Commitment II (EEC II) and the setting up of our CERT (Carbon Emission Reduction Target) programme. Following the Government’s announcement increasing CERT by 20%, our target to reduce our customers’ carbon intensity has increased but we are still on track to meet our commitments. We take the role of reducing customers’ energy consumption very seriously via a broad range of energy efficiency products. We aim to ensure that all customers have the opportunity to reduce their energy consumption and play their part in mitigating the effects of climate change regardless of the type and style of house they live in. We are committed to innovation and are continually exploring new and different ways of saving energy in the home and the CERT mechanism, as a carbon emissions reduction target allows savings to be achieved through improvements across the spectrum of insulation, draught proofing, heating, hot water, lighting and power. We believe the strength of the scheme is in its breadth of coverage and we aim to maximise that breadth. However the majority of our expenditure in 2008 was spent insulating homes and we delivered almost twice our original forecast. Some customers may have already insulated their homes but perhaps have not yet adopted energy efficient lighting and by offering newer, physically smaller compact fluorescent lamps we can help transform markets and increase the adoption of this very effective measure.

We have widened the CERT product portfolio on our online energy saving shop and see this as yet another way to increase awareness of simple low cost products to help our customers reduce their energy consumption.