This report also reflects our approach to how we do business, and captures our performance, in relation to our Changing Energy strategy. Changing Energy is driving our efforts to deliver sustainable solutions to current and future energy challenges. We're aiming to transform every aspect of energy: how we make it, how it's used, and society's understanding of it.

To achieve this, we've identified our Corporate Responsibilities to provide the framework and direction for our actions and to demonstrate our responsible and sustainable approach to how we do business. By explicitly defining our responsibilities, we can focus our efforts so that customers and other stakeholders will know what to expect.

Our CR report is available online where you can find a comprehensive account of our business performance, with charts, comparisons and case studies.

We have also produced a pocket-sized 'CR in brief' leaflet summarising our approach to CR and signposting readers to this web-based report.

The data in this report covers the 1 January to 31 December 2008 reporting period unless stated otherwise and has been independently verified by the Reassurance Network and compiled using the G3 guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The report highlights E.ON's activity across the UK and complements the E.ON Group CR report 2008 available on our Group website, www.eon.com.

We're continually looking for ways to improve our reporting and actively seek feedback from a wide range of stakeholders about what they would like to see in future reports. So if you have questions or feedback about this report, or the company's CR activities in general, please contact the Corporate Responsibility team, E.ON UK, Westwood Way, Westwood Business Park, Coventry CV4 8LG cr@eon-uk.com.

Reviewed 2009 Information on this page has been assured by The ReAssurance Network

The issues of security of supply, the cost of energy and how best to help the industry’s most vulnerable customers are coming up time and time again.

The 12 months of 2008 proved to be extremely difficult for the energy industry as a whole and for E.ON in particular, with the issues of security of supply, the cost of energy and how best to help the industry’s most vulnerable customers coming up time and time again.

While all of the major energy companies had their issues over vulnerable customers and pricing – with 2008 seeing large price increases forced on everyone as a result of the massive increase in oil prices over the summer – it was our application for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, that put us firmly under the spotlight.

Our application to build the UK’s first new coal-fired power station in decades was a polarising decision, with green groups using the announcement as a clarion call for climate change protesters across the country. We took the debate onto a public platform through the publication of our ‘Carbon Cost and Consequences’ manifesto that explained the need for cleaner coal as part of a balanced generation portfolio that would provide our customers with secure and affordable energy that was less harmful to the environment.

Many environmentalists were opposed to our plans and mounted a series of direct actions against us, both at Kingsnorth and other of our UK sites. The main event was the Climate Camp held outside Kingsnorth in August. While the activities of many at the Camp were perfectly law-abiding, it was the avowed intent of some of the more radical groups to break into our existing power station and shut it down. As a result of increased security at the station and the support of the police, the station continued to generate as usual. Other direct actions included protests at our offices in Coventry, London and Nottingham, at conferences where our executives were talking and a visit by Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior to Kingsnorth and that situation has continued into 2009, with Greenpeace activists boarding an E.ON collier as it approached Kingsnorth in June and an increasingly violent protest by 1,000 people outside the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in October coming weeks after we announced that any investment decision on Kingsnorth was being put off for up to two or three years.

Whilst environmentalists focus solely on the ‘green’ issue, we have to look at the bigger picture; only diversity of generation can give security of supply, reduced carbon dioxide emissions and ensure affordability.

That’s why we’re also building one of the world’s largest combined heat and power (CHP) gas-fired power stations at the Isle of Grain, and have announced in 2009 the formation of a joint venture with RWE to build new nuclear power stations. We’ve also, together with our partners, gave the green light for the London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

With regards to the issue of pricing, unprecedented increases in oil prices during the summer meant that all of the energy companies endured large increases in energy costs. Whilst we were able to absorb some of these costs, price increases were an inevitable result and we increased electricity prices by 16% and gas prices by 26% in August 08. Despite those increases our Retail business has made a loss for the last two years and continued to be loss-making in the first quarter of this year.

We do recognise that increasing energy prices make life difficult for our more vulnerable customers and inevitably may lead to an increase in the number of people in fuel poverty. That’s why we’ve committed £350 million over three years to the Government’s CERT (Carbon Emissions Reduction Target). During 2008, we also insulated over 200,000 homes and distributed over 36.8 million low energy light bulbs. We’re also trialling our low carbon HeatPlant scheme to certain vulnerable customer groups.

It’s already clear that these issues are not going to go away in a hurry – even though prices have gone down during 2009, increased Government support for carbon capture and storage has been announced and renewable projects such as London Array have been given the green light. Greenpeace has already boarded an E.ON ship heading for Kingsnorth with a cargo of coal, and issues over pricing and billing continue to make headlines. There are clearly difficult times ahead for us, but we believe that the decisions we’re making today are the right ones for the country and for future generations.

Reviewed 2009 Information on this page has been assured by The ReAssurance Network

Our focus continues to be ensuring we have a range of generation options available to meet our aims of providing energy that’s affordable, secure and less harmful to the environment.

Next year will see a change in the structure of our generation business Groupwide. This will involve all of the Group’s gas-fired power stations – including ours in the UK – being managed centrally to share best practice and optimise the performance and maintenance of our plants. We continue to develop our multi-billion pound investment in new renewables, nuclear, gas and coal plant. We believe that coal with carbon capture and storage has to play an important part in securing our energy supply while decarbonising the sector. Because of this we will continue to pursue the development of a new coal-fired power plant at Kingsnorth with a public funded CCS demonstration that could become the world-first CCS operation at a commercial scale. We have, however, recently announced a delay to this project of up to three years for economic reasons, because the global recession has reduced energy demand and we cannot see a need for the energy this plant will produce ahead of 2016.

We’re also continuing to look at ways we can reduce the environmental impact of our business. Goals for the current year include significant reduction in business mileage, buildings energy use, and vehicle fleet carbon emissions, as well as reductions in waste to landfill. Our focus in the future will be to deliver improvements in all of our environmental impacts, whilst maintaining our commitments to community engagement.

In these difficult times, it’s vital that we continue to help our customers as far as possible to mitigate against rising energy bills and fulfil our commitment of putting ourselves in our customers’ shoes.

A particular focus for us during the next 12 months will be to ensure we get the basics right. We aim to have efficient, cost-effective processes that deliver the levels of service our customers have a right to expect.

If we ensure we get the basics right, this will go a long way towards helping us achieve customer loyalty and also attract new customers across the three markets in which we operate

We’re also aiming to expand the range of products and services we offer, in particular looking at innovative energy efficiency streams that will help our customers become more energy conscious.

During 2010, we aim to publish our ‘People Manifesto’, which builds on the guiding principles, describing in more detail what we expect of our people and what our people can expect of us in return. Key areas will include:

• Putting safety above all other considerations – we want our people to stay safe and well at work.
• Developing our managers and leaders by ensuring they have the training and support they need to lead our business and our people effectively.
• Continuing to provide high-quality HR support that reflects the changing needs of our business.
• Providing an environment where all colleagues are valued and feel they can flourish. We have recently launched our first diversity survey for all colleagues to tell us how we can improve our working environment to achieve our aims.
• Continuing to address resource skills gaps through talent management the developing future talent pools in key areas such as engineering.

Reviewed 2009 Information on this page has been assured by The ReAssurance Network