Clearly Net Zero | July 2026 | Monthly Insight

There’s a particular kind of dread that settles in around this time of year if you’re responsible for a care home, a hotel, or any business with a serious energy overhead. You know winter is coming. You know what it does to your bill. And this year, it’s not just the bill you need to worry about — there are regulatory deadlines building quietly in the background that could leave you exposed financially and legally. The good news is that July is genuinely the right moment to get ahead of all three. Here’s what’s on the horizon.

1. You Might Be a Heat Supplier — And Not Know It

Since 27 January 2026, Ofgem has formally begun regulating heat networks across Great Britain. The trigger is deceptively simple: if your building distributes centrally generated heat — hot water, heating, cooling — to two or more separate occupiers from a shared system, you are almost certainly operating a heat network under the law. A business with a communal boiler serving other sub-let offices. A hotel with a shared hot water system serving private apartments. A B2B building with a central plant and multiple tenants. All potentially in scope.

The new rules cover fair pricing, transparent billing, consumer protection, complaints handling, and a Priority Services Register for vulnerable occupants. The registration deadline with Ofgem is 26 January 2027 — which sounds comfortable until you factor in how long compliance reviews and billing audits actually take alongside a day job.

“If your building has a shared boiler and two or more occupiers paying for that heat, the regulation almost certainly applies to you.”

Ofgem has indicated the first year is a learning period, but enforcement ramps up through 2027. If you’re not sure whether you’re in scope, the worst thing you can do is assume you’re fine. CNZ is already helping care and hospitality clients understand their status and get the right documentation in place. It starts with a conversation.

2. Lock In Your 2027 Energy Costs Now — Before the Market Does It For You

Wholesale electricity sits around 9.8p/kWh as of Q1 2026, and forward curves point to a gradual softening through 2027 and 2028. That sounds reassuring. But wholesale is only part of your bill. Non-commodity charges — network fees, transmission costs, capacity levies — are rising regardless of what the market does. Standing charges for businesses were set to nearly double in April 2026, and by 2031 the fixed daily cost of being connected to the grid could exceed £9,000 a year.

The British Chambers of Commerce found that 52% of businesses cited utility costs as a price pressure in Q4 2025. Forward contracts for 2027 delivery are currently trading around 9p/kWh — and geopolitical risk could push that higher, not lower, over the next six months. Flexible purchasing — buying your energy in tranches across time rather than fixing everything at once — is gaining real traction among SMEs precisely because it addresses both price certainty and market opportunity. 

The businesses that end up overpaying for energy in 2027 won’t be the ones that made the wrong call on the market. They’ll be the ones that made no call at all — that rolled into renewal without a strategy and took whatever their supplier quoted. CNZ works with businesses across care, hospitality and B2B to model consumption, assess the forward curve, and structure procurement that suits their risk appetite. July is the right time. Not October.

3. Cut Waste-to-Landfill Costs by Up to 30% With a Resource Audit

The “circular economy” sounds like a policy document. The numbers attached to it don’t. Sending waste to landfill costs around £102 per tonne, with landfill tax adding approximately £250 per skip.  A systematic resource audit — understanding what you’re throwing away and what could be diverted — consistently identifies savings of 20–30% on total waste disposal costs for most commercial operations.

The compliance picture is tightening too. Simpler Recycling — requiring businesses to separate plastics, paper, glass, metals and food waste — is already in force for operations with 10 or more staff. From 31 March 2027 it extends further. The Environment Agency is now issuing charges of £118 per hour to investigate non-compliant businesses.  That’s not the fine. That’s the investigation cost.

For care home groups and hotel operations with large kitchens, the aggregate saving across multiple sites can be substantial — and most of the data you need already exists in your waste collection invoices. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. CNZ conducts resource audits that turn raw data into a clear financial and compliance picture, specific to your sector and your sites.

Three Topics. One Underlying Truth.

Whether it’s a heat network compliance obligation you didn’t know you had, a 2027 energy contract sitting in an increasingly volatile market, or a waste bill that’s quietly higher than it needs to be — none of these are insurmountable. All of them are more manageable in July than they will be in November.

At CNZ, we have these conversations with businesses every day. Not alarming, not jargon-heavy. Just practical. If any of this has landed, we’d genuinely love to hear from you. Not a sales pitch. Just a proper conversation about where your business is and what a sensible next step looks like.

Call Jon or Laura on 01524 259 200 to talk.