Being trusted means we have to act responsibly and build customer and stakeholder relationships; so we talk about the challenges we face and we don't duck the difficult decisions.

As an industry, we have significant challenge ahead, both in terms of filling the capacity gap that is opening up in UK generation within the next decade and in seeking to meet the EU's renewable energy targets, with their impact both on generation and on infrastructure.

• We want the Government to clearly communicate the scale and nature of the challenge in delivering the UK's energy needs and renewable energy targets, including the need to invest in up to 25GW of new capacity to replace current coal, oil and nuclear capacity.
• We want the Government to ensure there is consideration of the need to provide flexible fossil-fuelled back-up generation capacity to support the increased level of intermittent renewable generation such as marine and wind.
• We want the implications for the UK's energy needs and targets set out in terms of costs, both to make sure that consumers of power are aware of the potential bills and also to create conditions in which investors can expect to recover an appropriate reward on their investments.

Working towards low carbon energy

We're committed to producing and delivering energy to our customers whilst reducing our carbon intensity. During 2007, we invested £933 million which is more than we made in profits   -   £777 million. We expect to make similar investments during 2008. We're expecting the UK Government to consult on how it will deliver the EU's renewable energy target of 15 percent and we're committed to playing our part.

Keeping the lights on

We use diverse energy sources to ensure we meet energy needs now and for the future. This means ensuring we maintain our existing assets - both power stations and networks - to a high standard. We are committed to achieving the highest possible economic availability at our power stations, delivering both security of supply and affordable electricity. For our distribution business, our target for 2008 for customer lost minutes is 65.3 for Central Networks East and 81.9 for Central Networks West.

Reducing our environmental impact

We minimise the impact of our business operations, reducing emissions and waste. We're continuing to work with Global Action Plan to reduce our waste and continue to provide solutions to reduce our non operational footprint. We've set targets of 12 percent reduction per person for office energy consumption and 10 percent reduction per person in business miles. We've also hosted a Groupwide Environment Conference to share thoughts and ideas from across E.ON.

Helping customers with their energy needs

Our aim is to transform our relationship with customers from commodity provider to trusted energy partner. We will continue to help protect our customers from volatility in the wholesale market as best we can, and will also place additional emphasis on helping the more vulnerable and fuel poor in society. As part of this, we will actively review the services we offer the fuel poor and we will look for ways to improve our targeted spend. As always, we will support society in the efficient use of energy, and continue to provide customer focused and market-leading products and services.

Being trusted

We act responsibly, building customer and stakeholder relationships to be recognised as a trusted energy partner. We're aware that not all our decisions have met with universal approval – energy companies have been criticised for price rises and our investment in new coal-fired generation at Kingsnorth has been under the spotlight. During 2008, we want to raise our level of external engagement by holding stakeholder events to discuss and debate the challenges we are facing. We're also committed to strengthening our relationships with NGOs.

Our people

We create success through and for our people. Ultimately, the only sustainable competitive advantage for any company comes from its people. Given the investment challenge facing our sector, we'll continue our efforts in training and recruiting the engineers of the future. We're also conscious that our people are the best advocates for our business. We're committed during 2008 to providing more pro-active dialogue from the Board down, with our people to highlight the challenges we face and the work we're doing as a business to deliver our Changing Energy strategy. We fundamentally believe that all injuries and occupational illnesses can be prevented and that excellence in health and safety drives excellence in business performance. By 2010 our aim is to achieve excellence in this area by achieving an LTIF of 1.0 for our Generation business.