Centrica has brought forward its Net Zero target by five years to 2045 and promised more details in a Climate Transition Plan later this year. The company says it plans to launch a hybrid heat pump trial in the coming months and is developing a paid-for proposition for air source heat pumps.  It has trained staff to fit EV charging points and wants to install 23,000 EV points this year across its residential, small and large business customer base.It has also brought forward its commitment to electrifying its 12,000-strong fleet of vehicles from 2030 to 2025.

The plans came in an annual report where Centrica restated plans to compete a major restructure to a leaner company, focused on its core markets of the UK and Ireland, reporting an operating loss on continuing operations of £362M.

Domestic customers (the British Gas brand) fell by 2% over the year, even though British Gas took on customers from Robin Hood Energy, Breeze Energy and Simplicity Energy.

The cost per customer in British Gas Energy was £106 in 2020, down £5 compared to 2019. But the company plans to shift them to a cheaper ‘software as a service’ third party platform “to compete more effectively with challenger brands”. It has around 36,000 residential customers on this platform at the moment.  It will also migrate residential and smaller business customers – of which numbers remained steady at  470,000.This change is expected to result in additional operating costs but Centrica expects to reduce expenditure on the legacy IT system.

The company has put the divestment of its 20%  stake in UK operating nuclear stations ‘on pause’ due to the plants’ operating issues – production last year was down 11%, as an extended outage at Hinkley Point B took the plant offline for most of the year. As in 2019, outages at Dungeness B and Hunterston B continued to limit nuclear output. Nuclear reported an adjusted operating loss of £17M, compared to a profit of £19M in 2019.