Key takeaways from our webinar: What greater control over business energy looks like in practice

In our recent webinar, Charlie Parry and Nick Evans were joined by Stephen Todd of e2 Energy Partners to discuss how businesses can move beyond short-term responses to energy volatility and regain greater control over a significant operating cost.

The volatility tax describes the cost and risk businesses carry when their electricity remains tied to unpredictable wholesale markets. We have previously explored how that exposure can remain within fixed-price contracts and why traditional procurement models can leave businesses vulnerable. The webinar moved the conversation forward, focusing on what an alternative looks like in practice.

Here are three key takeaways.

Takeaway #1: Energy certainty creates business certainty

For energy-intensive organisations, volatility does not stop at the meter. It affects budgets, margins, investment decisions and the prices businesses can offer their own customers. In manufacturing, those pressures can travel through entire supply chains and influence where future production and employment are located.

Greater control over energy costs gives businesses a firmer basis for decisions on investment, pricing and growth, without unexpected market movements forcing those plans off course.

Takeaway #2: Greater control is becoming accessible to more businesses

Private energy markets have traditionally been associated with hyperscalers and major corporations. The principal barriers are complexity and cost: structuring PPAs, shaping and balancing their output, and managing the legal arrangements can require substantial resources and specialist energy teams.

That, however, does not make PPAs unsuitable. It reflects the operational capability needed to turn renewable generation into a dependable supply arrangement. When those functions can be managed on the buyer’s behalf, private energy becomes accessible to a wider range of businesses.

The wholesale market is, by design, trying to be all things to all people. A private market can begin with the profile and priorities of one organisation. It can bring existing generation into the market, alongside options such as rooftop solar, vehicle-to-grid technology, wind, private wire arrangements and multi-year purchasing blocks, where these are economically viable.

This is where agency and choice become important. Businesses can make fuller use of the energy assets they already have, set price requirements for their own market and consider priorities such as local generation. They do not need to manage every technical detail themselves, but the resulting structure can be shaped around how they actually generate, purchase and consume energy.

Takeaway #3: Zero surprises can matter more than the lowest price

A long-term agreement will not beat every short-term offer that appears during its lifetime. However, comparing the two solely on today’s unit rate ignores the imbalance between a small potential saving and the potentially much greater cost of another sudden market increase.

Through the private market created by e2 Energy Partners and UrbanChain, Evtec Group secured a 15-year commodity price insulated from wholesale gas movements. Pass-through charges can still rise, but the most volatile part of its energy cost is known.

That certainty has meant zero additional provision for an unexpected commodity-price shock and zero management time diverted to electricity prices during the latest market disruption. The real value lies not in the board meeting itself, but in removing an unmanaged variable from decisions about budgets, production and customer pricing.

For businesses approaching renewal, the question is therefore not only what rate is available today, but how much agency and certainty the next procurement model provides.