National Grid
Big interview Light in the dark
The better a state is doing, so the saying goes, the less you should think about it. By that measure, the British government has seen better days. From market turmoil to runaway house prices, it recently feels like the country can do little else but worry. Energy is another persistent concern, especially as temperatures drop and gas prices stay frustratingly high. National Grid, it goes without saying, is at the centre of these developments. But, as Andrea Valentino fi nds out when he catches up with Andy Agg, the company’s CFO, the organisation is focused on far more than merely keeping the lights on.
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n December 1970, the lights went out in Britain. Years before the Three-Day Week, disgruntled electricity supply workers began refusing overtime, and only doing exactly what their contracts had specified. The union involved in the dispute, for its part, was sanguine – confident that serious disruption to the country’s electricity grid would take several weeks to appear. Yet just eight hours into this semi- strike, power cuts were reported across a third of the UK. Corridors went dark, shoplifting at department stores exploded, and the army was called in to provide hospitals with quick-fix generators. To put it another way, our thrusting, civilised society would be impossible without National Grid – a fact we may yet re-learn. With gas prices soaring, and the government’s new price cap giving households little incentive to turn down their thermostats, Britain could soon face the kind of energy catastrophe we hoped had been left with Ted Heath. National Grid seems deeply conscious of these risks, doubling the length of this year’s gas emergency test, and partnering with gas companies to secure supply.
All the same, the financial implications of high energy prices leading into the colder months remains fraught. “The past few months have obviously been very challenging for people who are seeing an increase in bills” admits Andy Agg, a veteran at National Grid and now the company’s group CFO. “We’re working very closely with others across the industry to do what we can to mitigate those challenges, for example returning £200m of revenue to the UK regulator early to help consumers sooner.” Given bookies are now predicting a one- in-ten chance of power cuts in
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