Octopus Energy, has launched a new advertising campaign rallying behind customers with the message: ‘We’ll keep fighting for you’.
Octopus’ pink mascot now stands tall on hundreds of billboards around Britain, symbolising the company’s commitment to stand up for its customers and challenge the status quo.
It comes as the UK government abandoned plans to introduce Zonal Pricing for electricity – a new pricing system championed by Octopus to unlock cheaper bills – opting instead for the promise of ‘Reformed National Pricing’. Unfortunately, there’s no definition of what this means, no published models, no cost-benefit analysis.
Zonal Pricing would have unlocked at least £3.7 billion to £5 billion in bill savings a year and avoided up to £27 billion in unnecessary grid infrastructure by 2030, sparing the construction of nearly 3,000km of pylons.
The decision to scrap Zonal Pricing means that any alternative will have to match or beat these benefits: lower bills for consumers by 2028 and fewer new pylons cluttering the landscape.
The billboards are the latest move in Octopus’ mission to shine a light on Britain’s energy waste. It follows hot on the heels of the company’s new ‘Wasted Wind’ ticker, which features prominently on its website and is visible to 12 million monthly visitors.
The ticker reveals, in real time, how much bill payers’ money is being frittered away by an outdated energy system that can’t keep up with the clean power it generates.
Already this year, the UK has paid almost £700 million to turn off wind farms when it’s windy and fire up gas power plants instead – around £250 million more than at this point last year.
These so-called ‘constraint costs’ – fuelled by wasted wind energy – are on track to cost the UK a staggering £8 billion a year by 2030
Octopus was founded to drive down energy costs as Britain transitions to green power, but this is only possible in a new market system that works with renewables, not against them.
This isn’t the first campaign Octopus has championed. In 2019, the energy price cap launched to protect UK consumers against energy company profiteering – putting up to £1 billion a year back in consumer pockets during the energy crisis alone.
Pete Miller, Octopus Energy’s Head of Customer Experience, said: “Despite a green kWh being cheaper to produce than a brown kWh, electricity bills are spiralling. Consumers deserve cheaper energy – Zonal Pricing would have unlocked that value, and there seems to be no other clear plan to bring them down.
“We will keep fighting for our customers – pushing for viable solutions that can fix our energy system and finally bring bills down for good.”
Greg Jackson, Founder of Octopus Energy said: “Bloated incumbent electricity generators fought off Zonal Pricing to protect their gravy train, and so they’ll fight any new reforms which will put money in the hands of consumers, not producers.
“We can’t allow families and businesses to continue suffering, as much needed reforms are kicked into the long grass. We will up the efforts to shine a light on the waste, inefficiency and gaming of our current system.”
