Executive Summary

The U.S. energy landscape is on the cusp of a new era. Fundamental change, driven by regulatory and environmental pressures, technological developments, and demand management issues, has created opportunities for new entrants to break into the market and muddied the waters for the established bastions of energy production and distribution – utilities. Competition between these new rivals – distributed energy players and tangentially-related tech companies and startups – and traditional, vertically-integrated utilities is heating up. They aren’t fighting over resources; their battle is with the customer and competing for share of mind.

At the same time, U.S. energy utilities are searching for revenue and growth. Energy efficiency and distributed energy initiatives have led to flattened overall demand and projected usage declines. The industry has turned to mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as its primary strategy to achieve growth, but sustained activity is dependent on deal fundamentals remaining strong and available acquisition prospects.

This transitional period for U.S. energy utilities is not unfamiliar – every industry undergoes transformation at one point or another, and the mark of a successful business is the ability to adapt with it. But these particular set of changes have direct parallels to the transformation of another utility landscape: the energy industry following deregulation in the UK.

Much like in the U.S. presently, UK energy deregulation brought about sweeping changes that ultimately resulted in heightened levels of competition and challenges to continued growth. British Gas, the monopoly gas supplier in the UK for decades, recognized that it needed to shift its business model and find new sources of revenue growth. Initially, the company diversified by moving into the electricity sector, but competition only increased as large electricity utilities began entering the gas market by cross selling gas to their electricity customers and through M&A. These new multi-utilities threatened to steal not just market share, but brand equity.

British Gas needed another way to diversify its revenue streams, set itself apart from its competitors, and re- establish its position as the number one trusted advisor in the energy space. The company focused on growing its home services division, which provided residential customers with maintenance and repair service plans underpinned by boiler replacement, from an insignificant piece of its business to a fully supported division. Not only was the program immensely successful from a financial perspective, it would serve as a competitive differentiator and valuable customer retention tool.

As energy utilities executives consider how to manage change in the new era, British Gas and its residential services division offers a proven model for success.

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About the Author

Sir Roy Gardner has extensive corporate experience, first in executive roles in the utility, telecommunications, and defense sectors, and then as a non-executive director for a wide range of companies. In his last executive role, he was Group Chief Executive of Centrica plc from 1997 to 2006, having taken the reins following the privatization of British Gas, and was responsible for growing the UK-centric gas supplier into a major multi-national energy business that more than doubled revenues over the period. Sir Roy was knighted in 2002 for services to the gas and electricity industries.

After stepping down from Centrica in 2006, Sir Roy was appointed Chairman of Compass Group plc, the global food services and catering group, where he served until February 2014. He is currently Chairman of EnServe Group Ltd. and of Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd., and a non-executive director of Willis Group Holdings plc and of William Hill plc. In addition, he is a Visiting Fellow of Oxford University, Senior Adviser to Credit Suisse Group, ex-Chairman of the Government's Apprenticeship Ambassadors Network, and Chairman of the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College.

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SECTION I. IOUs FACING ENORMOUS CHALLENGES, OPPORTUNITIES

For years, U.S. energy utilities operated profitably as vertically-integrated entities with limited outside competition. Now, however, industry insiders and experts agree that the energy utility industry of the future will not look like it does today, and investor-owned utilities (IOUs) will no longer be able to operate in exactly the same way. There may not be consensus on the timing of the dramatic changes in store for the industry, but there is no doubt that big change is coming.

Many of the anticipated changes pose significant challenges to current utility financial and operational models. For a hundred years, utility executives have assumed that growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and energy sales were intertwined. But while our GDP has rebounded from the Great Recession, sales have been lagging for seven consecutive years, despite the abundance of new tech gadgets. That century-old dynamic appears to be irrevocably changed.1 Underscoring this trend, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that retail electric sales will grow at an annual rate of 0.8% through 2040,2 under the 1% growth in sales utilities need to keep ahead of growth in expenses.3

A number of Wall Street analysts, including Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and UBS, recently warned about the “decline of the traditional utility” as new market threats have entered the energy sector.4 Beyond Wall Street, pundits have opined on the urgency of the challenges facing utilities. News headlines like “Why Are Utilities Letting Other People Take All the Value?” and “Dear Utilities, Change or Get Dumped” are indicative of the state of affairs.5 6 Their message is straightforward: if utilities want to survive in the energy industry of the future, they need to understand the transformations that are happening now and lie ahead, evolve their businesses and find opportunities to move forward.

Distributed Energy: Biggest Change on the Horizon

Distributed generation is often cited as the biggest threat to the traditional vertically integrated IOU model. Many business and residential customers are taking their energy needs into their own hands and generating their own power. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal cites the example of Arizona-based Sherry Pfister, who leased solar panels for her home, cutting her utility bill by a third.7 Unless utilities are able to assist customers in managing energy use and provide other value-added services, customers are increasingly going to shift toward the do it yourself energy model.

While U.S. utility customers currently generate only a small fraction of the nation’s energy supply from distributed sources, European countries, where solar and other distributed sources comprise a much higher percentage of electricity generated, serve as a bellwether for the future. Peter Terium, CEO of RWE, a traditional centralized distribution electricity utility in Germany and the parent company of npower, one of the “Big Six” energy providers in the UK (discussed later in this paper), acknowledged the inevitability of this shift:

“We have to adjust to the fact that, in the longer term, earning capacity in conventional electricity generation will be markedly below what we've seen in recent years,” Terium said, adding that this put strains on RWE's business model.8

The development of renewable energy sources is not just being pushed by distributed energy players like solar and wind businesses; state governments are also advocating for renewable energy in the form of Renewable Portfolio Standards. These standards, mandated in 29 states and the District of Columbia, require utilities to generate a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources, essentially creating competition to the traditional electricity model.9

The states are also demanding utilities undertake energy efficiency initiatives and reduce carbon emissions. And with the announcement of new regulations from the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2014, these restrictions will be more stringent than ever. The Clean Power Plan gives

3 guidelines on a state-by-state basis to further reduce carbon pollution by 30 percent from 2005 levels as a nation.10

While there are clear environmental benefits to promoting energy efficiency and carbon reduction, these programs are not always integrated with energy utility business models, and ratemaking has not evolved with the regulatory environment.11 Instead, utilities have felt cornered by the new regulations: with the traditional utility price model predicated on the idea that the more energy consumers use, the more the utility profits. To address this, some utilities have chosen to decouple profits from sales to accommodate these changes, leading in some cases to higher rates for customers.

Competition from New Market Entrants

New market entrants are another major challenge promising to disrupt the energy IOU industry.12 There are a number of new entrants making inroads into the sector, from the assumed to the unexpected, including those focused on generating electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar and biomass, as well as energy management technologies that allow consumers and businesses to reduce their energy consumption, even tech giants like Google, which acquired Nest Labs in January 2014. With its acquisition of Nest, Google also acquired its signature product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, the world’s first “smart thermometer” that programs itself and saves energy.13 Through the Nest Learning Thermostat, Google now potentially has access to any utility customer in the U.S. with one of these devices installed, and is rumored to be extending its reach even further into the utility sector, recognizing the significant market opportunity it presents.14

Google is not the only company from another industry encroaching on energy utilities’ territory with new technologies; a whole ecosystem of smart home technology providers has sprung up that allows consumers to monitor and manage their energy consumption. Companies span the technology, cable, and communication sectors – and they have figured out how to do the one thing IOUs have not done or chosen not to do: get beyond the meter and into the home.15

Utility Response

In response to these various challenges – both traditional and emerging – many utilities have turned to M&A, growing their revenue by merging with or acquiring other utilities and their customers. Over the last 20 years, 16 there have been more than 100 transactions in the industry, and this activity shows no signs of abating.

Pursuing M&A to generate economies of scale and increase efficiency has been a core growth strategy in the energy utility sector, and the drivers that have supported deal making for the past few decades remain

4 as solid as ever.17 With pressure to grow and find new sources of revenue and deal fundamentals returning post-recession, consolidation across the industry is increasing at a faster rate, with positive deal volume reaching a three-year high in 2013.18 However, relying on M&A as a company’s sole growth strategy is a dangerous path to follow, and while the deal pipeline is currently robust, this level of activity is not sustainable.

Uncertain Future

Utilities now face, or will soon face, unprecedented challenges as our entire notion of how electricity should be generated and natural gas produced, delivered, and paid for is changing. While M&A may help these companies achieve scale and growth in the short-term, utilities will need to turn to additional creative solutions to adapt to the challenges outlined above.

The good news is that other regulated entities have also faced game-changing challenges and managed to thrive, even while managing decades of dramatic changes.

SECTION II. BRITISH GAS: A CASE STUDY

In the early 1990s, British Gas, the largest energy and home services company in the UK today, stood on the cusp of a similar transformational moment in its business life cycle. Though there are nuances to the specific technology, regulatory, and competitive market challenges we faced, the overall threat to our business was no different: the vertically integrated model that had served us well for decades no longer would sustain growth. We needed to redirect our business and find a way to jumpstart revenue growth while differentiating ourselves from the competition.

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The Gas Act of 1986 marked the end of an era. British Gas – a direct descendant of the Gas Light and Coke Company, the world’s first public utility – had until this point held an unopposed monopoly position as the sole publicly owned supplier and distributor of natural gas in the United Kingdom. Gas production was the only industry segment where British Gas met with any competition, primarily from large multinational oil companies19. Introduced as part of the deregulation movement under the Margaret Thatcher-led Conservative Government, the Gas Act privatized British Gas with the goal of deregulating the industry, opening up the market to new entrants and delivering benefits to consumers. Initial shares were offered at 135p ($2.3020), valuing the company at £9 ($15.3) billion – the highest ever equity offering at the time.21

However, the path to a liberalized energy market in the UK was not a straight one: it would be another decade before British Gas’s monopoly was dismantled. For the next 10 years, the company continued to control 90 percent of the market, even after the Office of Gas Regulation (Ofgas) introduced legislation that required British Gas to limit buying gas from new UK continental shelf to 90 percent. Our de facto monopoly won us no favors with consumers who begrudged the lack of choices, regulators or the media. It wasn’t until further regulatory intervention necessitated the restructuring of British Gas into separate listed entities – Centrica, which today maintains the British Gas retail brand, and BG plc, which operates exploration and production, and international downstream operations (National Grid runs the British transmission and distribution business) – that new entrants encroached on the company’s dominance of the sector.22

Between the value of the company’s assets decreasing by half (falling from £15.5 ($26.3) billion to £7.7 ($13) billion) and the cost of executing the divestiture, British Gas was financially weakened. Deregulation had fundamentally changed the market dynamics. For the first time in the history of the company, the gas industry in the UK was a fully competitive market.23 Demand was dispersed among the new competitors, and retail

5 gas prices plunged – in fact, in 1998, the UK had the lowest gas prices in all of Europe. 24 The drop-off in demand British Gas faced was similar to what the U.S. IOU is currently experiencing, although generally the IOUs have yet to cave to a significant price decrease.

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By the end of 1997-beginning of 1998, it was clear that our industry was undergoing a transformation and that we needed to transform with it. Facing declining revenues and customer losses, we knew we needed to diversify our revenue streams and expand our reach.

Initially, British Gas pursued strategic growth opportunities by expanding into new markets, which undeniably served an important role in the evolution of our business. At the end of 1997, we announced our entry into the electricity sector, becoming the first national supplier in Britain to offer both gas and electricity.25 At the outset, our strategy of revenue diversification via entry into new segments was a success: by the end of 1998, more than 850,000 customers had signed electricity supply contracts, representing three percent of the domestic electricity supply market.26 Notably, in order to attract consumers away from our more entrenched electric utility rivals, our initial offer was on average 12 percent below current prices.27

However, our move into electricity set off a trend of M&A-driven horizontal integration in the energy utility sector in the UK. Like British Gas, Britain’s electric utilities had been forced to shift away from the vertically integrated public utility model due to deregulation. Following British Gas’s lead, many of these utilities

started expanding into the gas sector through takeovers and mergers, and undercutting our gas prices.28 This rapid consolidation across the UK energy sector would lead to the formation of six major “multi-utilities” – British Gas, EDF Energy, E.ON UK, RWE npower, Scottish Power and SSE – and create one of the most competitive energy markets in the world.29

Rates of customer switching were high during this period: by 2001 approximately 40 percent of customers had switched away from their regional electricity supplier, and we were facing similar turnover in the residential gas market.30 We had, in effect, a customer loyalty and retention issue.

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The business model shift that would eventually serve as one of our biggest competitive differentiators stemmed from an incidental part of British Gas’s business that preceded deregulation. In 1988, shortly after

6 the enactment of the Gas Act, British Gas was reorganized into four product-based divisions in support of the development of higher value-added services.31 One of those four principal divisions was home services, focused on the installation, service, and maintenance of domestic gas appliances, primarily for central heating.32 It was this piece of the business, which at the time produced around £10 ($17) million in profit, on which our business would pivot.

When the UK energy market became fully competitive, there were three critical, interrelated issues British Gas needed to solve: we needed to grow our revenues, improve customer service and customer satisfaction levels, and restore brand equity. At the same time, there was a gap in the energy market for affordable, ongoing maintenance, servicing, and cover for breakdowns or repairs in the home. We saw an opportunity to address this gap in the marketplace by further developing and investing in our home services division. Moreover, our investment in home services would ideally lead to a new and profitable source of revenue for our business, increase customer loyalty, and help cement our position as the number one trusted energy advisor to our customers.

Over the next few years, British Gas broadened its home services offerings to include a wide range of maintenance and breakdown products, underpinned by boiler replacements that complemented our main business streams. Some programs were less successful than others. For example, the home security cover product that we launched in 2001 after a pilot study was discontinued in 2006. But the contract cover products that aligned with our core businesses – gas, heating, electricity, and plumbing, following British Gas’s 2004 acquisition of Dyno-Rod – would eventually take off.33

We also made a significant investment in superior customer service and expanded our team of service engineers and the technology to support them, enabling British Gas to more quickly respond to urgent customer demands and service repairs or breakdowns. And our investment paid dividends, especially with regard to customer satisfaction levels. In the first year following these radical changes, category A complaints (Category A complaints are those where the customer dealt with British Gas and the reply they received was not to their satisfaction) to the Gas Consumers Council decreased by 39 percent. 34

Home services – later renamed residential services – went from being a relatively insignificant source of revenue at the start of deregulation to a key driver of British Gas’s revenue and a foundational pillar of its customer relationships. Between 2001 and 2013, revenue for British Gas’s residential services grew from £457 ($776) million to £979 ($1.66) billion, an increase of 114 percent. Additionally, as we streamlined operating expenses and improved IT efficiencies, profit grew from £21 ($36) million to £188 ($319) million, an enormous increase of 795 percent.

As of the end of 2013, British Gas had nearly 10 million customer product services contracts, and retention of existing customers remains strong.35

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And perhaps most significantly, our residential services business continues to play a critical role in bolstering our reputation in the eyes of our customers, due in large part to our network of service engineers, who now number over 10,000, and the help they provide to customers.36 One of our core values has always been to serve as a trusted advisor and mutual partner to our customers, and our residential services business is the most direct line we have to our customers.

It’s worth noting that while British Gas’s expansion into residential services was an unmitigated success, the other Big 6 energy utilities have struggled in their forays into home maintenance and repair cover. Three of the Big 6 currently run residential services businesses – Scottish Southern Energy (SSE), which holds under 200,000 contracts,37 npower with about 60,000 and Scottish Power with a smaller book of business. E.ON previously offered residential services products, but spun off the business in 2013. The other Big Six, too, tried to ride British Gas’s coattails into the residential services arena, but met with failure. British Gas remains the clear dominant player, not just in the residential services space, but in the UK energy sector overall.

SECTION III. DISCUSSION

Why did British Gas succeed where others failed?

A primary reason our residential services division expanded while others did not was our small, but existing, business in this area, and how quickly we scaled up the business. British Gas was the first to enter the home maintenance and repair services space and has continued to innovate and develop new products for this market over the past 15 years. As essentially the first mover, we have had a significant advantage over the other Big Six from the get-go.

However, British Gas was also the first utility to cross-sell electricity, and while we once again had the first- mover advantage, other utilities did ultimately break into new industries, including gas. What that suggests with regards to our residential services division is that we had other advantages in play that the rest of the Big Six did not. We had the infrastructure and the expertise they lacked, which is critical in a services business that is centered on the relationship between the customer and the service engineer. Before we even decided to ramp up our residential services division, we already had infrastructure in place and thousands of service engineers. The investment we needed to make, though not insubstantial, was significantly smaller than our rivals. We didn’t have to build from scratch, and because of that, we were able to leapfrog our competitors.

This leads us into a discussion about how a residential services program might work in the context of the American energy utilities landscape:

• What parallels can we draw between the gas market in Britain at the onset of deregulation and the U.S. IOU landscape today?

• How could a residential services program help IOUs contribute to their business growth and build their brand equity?

• Is there a complementary market opportunity being missed?

• What steps would utilities need to undertake in order for these programs to be successful? Is there one road or multiple paths to success?

With rare exception, most U.S. utilities do not currently have the existing infrastructure to implement a residential maintenance and repair service program, nor the personnel, expertise or marketing to support one. Does this mean, like the other Big Six, launching a residential services program is doomed to failure before the start? Or are there utilities that will recognize the potential rewards such a program can bring, and make the hefty investment needed?

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If a utility isn’t in the position to invest so much of its resources, or views the investment as too much of a risk, are there other routes to launching a residential services maintenance and repair program that are worth exploring?

There are. For example, some utilities have partnered with third parties that provide the infrastructure and marketing support, while enabling the utility to offer the program under their own brand to build customer goodwill and brand equity.

It is clear there are no easy answers to these questions, and any solutions that IOUs implement will likely take significant resources – including time and money. However, rather than overlook or dismiss developing this business because of barriers, a residential services program should be viewed as a legitimate market opportunity and considered as part of a company’s overall strategy. In the end, the most important element is for management teams to begin asking these questions and forming the answers and strategies that make the most sense for their businesses.

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1 Smith, Rebecca. “Electricity Sales Anemic for Seventh Year in a Row.” The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/articles/electric-utilities-get-no-jolt-from-gadgets-improving-economy-1406593548. 2 “Annual Energy Outlook 2014: with projections to 2040.” U.S. Energy Information Administration, April 2014. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/0383(2014).pdf 3 Smith, Rebecca. “Electricity Sales Anemic for Seventh Year in a Row.” The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/articles/electric-utilities-get-no-jolt-from-gadgets-improving-economy-1406593548. 4 Lacey, Stephen. "Wall Street Firms Step Up Warnings About Distributed Energy’s Threat to Utilities.” Greentech Media, May 27, 2014. http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/wall-street-firms-keep-warning-of-distributed- energy-threat. 5 Stinson, Paul. "Dear Utilities, Change or Get Dumped." Energy Exchange, July 7, 2014. http://blogs.edf.org/energyexchange/2014/07/09/dear-utilities-change-or-get-dumped/ (accessed July 15, 2014). 6 Day, Rob. "Why Are Utilities Letting Other People Take All the Value? | Cleantech Investing." Greentech Media. http://www.greentechmedia.com/cleantech-investing/post/why-are-utilities-letting-other-people-take-all-the-value. 7 Smith, Rebecca. “Electricity Sales Anemic for Seventh Year in a Row.” The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/articles/electric-utilities-get-no-jolt-from-gadgets-improving-economy-1406593548 8 Clercq, Geert. "Analysis: Renewables turn utilities into dinosaurs of the energy world." Reuters, March 8, 2013. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-utilities-threat-idUSBRE92709E20130308. 9 "AWEA State RPS Market Assessment 2013." AWEA. http://www.awea.org/Resources/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=5669. 10 Pavlich, Katie. “Some Things to Know About Obama's New EPA Regulations.” Townhall.com, June 2, 2014. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2014/06/02/what-you-need-to-know-about-obamas-new-epa-regulations- n1846510. 11 “CASE 14-M-0101 - Proceeding on Motion of the Commission in Regard to Reforming the Energy Vision.” State of New York Public Service Commission, April 24, 2014. 12 “The new math. Solving the equation for disruption to the U.S. electric power industry.” Deloitte, March 2014. http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom- UnitedStates/Local%20Assets/Documents/Energy_us_er/us_er_TheNewMath_DCES_March2014.pdf. 13 “Next Labs Introduces the World’s First Learning Thermostat.” Nest press release, October, 25, 2011. https://nest.com/press/nest-labs-introduces-worlds-first-learning-thermostat/ 14 Womack, Brian, and Mark Chediak. "Google Said to Plan Energy Push With Tools for Utilities." Bloomberg.com, June 10, 2014. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-10/google-said-to-plan-energy-push-with-tools-for-utilities.html. 15 Goossens, Ehren, Mark Chediak, and Jim Polson. "Why Google, Comcast, and AT&T Are Making Power Utilities Nervous." Bloomberg BusinessWeek, May 29, 2014. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-29/utilities-face- threat-from-vivint-google-comcast-at-and-t. 16 Brewer, Reuben. "This Industry Expert Says Utility Mergers Will Keep Coming." The Motley Fool, July 14, 2014. http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/07/14/this-industry-expert-says-utility-mergers-will-kee.aspx. 17 Azagury, Jack, Walt Shill and Ted Walker. “The Race to Consolidate: Positioning to win in the contest for scale.” Public Utilities Fortnightly, September 2012. http://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2012/09/race- consolidate?authkey=0e1bee26edc927f8fe46fa57e971e36a99145df3c04d638d43c3c374690389fc 18 “Power transactions and trends: Global power and utilities mergers and acquisitions: 2013 review and 2014 outlook.” Ernst & Young. http://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/EY_- _Power_transactions_and_trends:_2013_review_and_2014_outlook/$FILE/EY-PU-PTT-Q413.pdf 19 Juris, Andrej . "Natural Gas Markets in the UK." World Bank, March 1998. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTFINANCIALSECTOR/Resources/282884-1303327122200/138juris.pdf (accessed July 15, 2014). 20 Pounds Sterling to U.S. Dollar conversion £1.00 = $1.70 21 Gas & Electricity, Boilers and Energy Efficiency - British Gas." Gas & Electricity, Boilers and Energy Efficiency - British Gas. http://www.britishgas.co.uk/. 22 BG Group. "Our history." BG Group. http://www.bg-group.com/25/about-us/our-history/. 23 "The Social Effects of Energy Liberalisation." World Trade Organization Department of Trade and Industry, June 2000. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/symp_mar02_uk_social_effects_energy_lib_e.pdf

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24 "The Social Effects of Energy Liberalisation." World Trade Organization Department of Trade and Industry, June 2000. http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/symp_mar02_uk_social_effects_energy_lib_e.pdf 25 “British Gas signs up its first electricity customers.” British Gas press release, December 1, 1997. 26 "Centrica plc Annual Report 1998." Centrica plc. https://www.centrica.com/files/reports/1998_annual_report.pdf. 27 “British Gas electricity offer attracts over one million customers.” British Gas press release, May 22, 1998. 28 "Liberalisation, privatisation and regulation in the UK electricity sector." Pique, November 2006. http://www.pique.at/reports/pubs/PIQUE_CountryReports_Electricity_UK_November2006.pdf. 29 Arentsen, Maarten J., and Rolf W. KuÌnneke. National reforms in European gas. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2003. 30 Burns, Phil. "In the Heat of Battle." Frontier Economics, June 2014. http://www.frontier- economics.com/documents/2014/06/in-the-heat-of-battle-frontier-bulletin.pdf (accessed July 18, 2014). 31 Martin, Stephen, and David Parker. The impact of privatisation: ownership and corporate performance in the UK. London: Routledge, 1997. 32 "Centrica plc Annual Report 1998." Centrica plc. https://www.centrica.com/files/reports/1998_annual_report.pdf. 33 Aldrick, Philip. "Dyno-Rod sold to British Gas for £57m." The Telegraph, October 2, 2004. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2896263/Dyno-Rod-sold-to-British-Gas-for-57m.html. 34 Annual Report and Accounts 2007." Centrica plc. http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2007ar/files/2007_annual_report.pdf. 35 "Centrica plc - Annual Report and Accounts 2013." Centrica plc - Annual Report and Accounts 2013. http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2013ar/index.asp#ref_annualreport2013. 36 "Centrica plc - Annual Report and Accounts 2013." Centrica plc - Annual Report and Accounts 2013. http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2013ar/index.asp#ref_annualreport2013. 37 “SSE plc Annual Report 2014.” SSE plc Annual 2014. http://sse.com/media/241200/2014AnnualReport.pdf.

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