M&S breaks into energy with saving incentives

Marks & Spencer (M&S) has continued its drive to establish itself as the greenest name on the high street, teaming up with energy giant Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) to launch a new energy tariff designed to encourage customers to curb energy use.

Under the partnership, M&S will launch a new division, M&S Energy, which will offer customers a dual-fuel gas and electricity tariff from SSE at the same price as that offered to the energy giants direct debit customers – £1,196 for an average household.

Customers will then be offered M&S vouchers for signing up, renewing their contracts and cutting their energy use, alongside free advice on how to curb their domestic energy use.

Dual fuel customers switching to M&S Energy will receive a £20 M&S voucher on signing up, a further £10 voucher for each year they remain with the company, and a £15 voucher for every year they cut energy use by 10 per cent. Those signing up for paperless billing will also receive an additional £10 voucher.

Carl Leaver, director of international, home and M&S Direct, said that the aim of the new service was to encourage customers to cut their energy use.

"We… understand that the cost of living has risen for many customers and we hope to encourage them to save money by reducing their energy usage, as well as giving M&S store vouchers as rewards for doing so," he said. "We've developed an extremely competitively priced product that will help M&S Energy customers to help the environment."

All the electricity used by M&S Energy customers will be matched by an equivalent amount procured from SSE's hydroelectric power plant.

While it can be reasonably claimed that the electricity provided by M&S is from renewable sources, a spokeswoman for SSE admitted it was debatable whether the tariff could be classified as green as the power will be sourced from the company's 1,400MW of hydroelectric capacity.

Although, she added that SSE was planning to invest £3.5bn in expanding its renewables capacity over the next five years and that the new M&S tariff had been set up to encourage energy saving.