Energy suppliers think that within five years they will be offering their customers product and service packages that include mobility, flexibility services and funding for site-based products such as rooftop PV and batteries. And suppliers will be more likely to offer ‘heat services’ to their customers than to offer gas, according to a survey of energy companies.
That was the view of 75 suppliers, service companies and consultants polled in research commissioned by Ferranti Computer Systems and carried out by Enstra Consulting.
The companies were polled in October and November last year, as the effect of the scale of the energy crisis on UK suppliers was still unfolding. For energy suppliers the ability of customers to pay their bills was already one of the biggest concerns keeping supplier chief executives awake at night, but so was the ability of both the suppliers and their customers to achieve Net Zero goals.
The suppliers’ response is expected to be to increase the emphasis on supplying electricity – along with a key role in providing and guaranteeing ‘green’ supplies. But ‘heat’ supply (65%) was more likely than natural gas supply (55%), with a significant interest (38%) in supplying hydrogen.
Electricity supply clearly offered the most product and services opportunities. Combined bills for premises and EV use, flexibility, leasing or other finance for capital works, as well as battery and solar PV installation and management were among the offerings expected by over 80% of suppliers within the next half-decade.
“The market will move from ‘commodity’ to ‘commodity, infrastructure and energy management’, said Enstra Consulting’s Peter Franklin. As a result the most likely source of new competitors was the tech sector, which was also boosted by digitalisation.
This was seen as separate from the long-promised ‘energy services’ sector, which was a less likely source of new competitors than either automotive and ‘big oil’ – both some way behind tech competitors.

You can read the full survey results here: and see the webinar where the results were presented here: