Octopus overtakes British Gas as Britain’s largest household energy supplier
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Company grew share of market to 23.7% of households in Great Britain by end of 2024, says Cornwall Insight. Octopus Energy has become Britain’s largest household energy supplier for the first time, toppling British Gas almost four decades after it was privatised under Margaret Thatcher.
The energy company grew its share of the market to 23.7% of households in Great Britain by the end of last year, according to latest figures, less than a decade after it was founded by its chief executive, Greg Jackson. Octopus confirmed that it gained almost 1m new gas and electricity accounts from its rivals last year alone. It now has 12.9m domestic accounts across gas and electricity, and serves 7.3 million households.
The report, by the influential energy consultancy Cornwall Insight, showed that the next largest energy supplier, which is understood to be British Gas, held a 23.1% share of the market, or 320,000 fewer accounts than Octopus. Dan Morris, the chief executive of Cornwall Insight, said the toppling of British Gas from its leading position in the market was “quite honestly the biggest development in the domestic retail energy market since it opened”.
British Gas was privatised in 1986 through the “Tell Sid” marketing campaign, which encouraged the public to buy shares in the company. The electricity board was separately broken up and privatised in the early 1990s. Octopus was founded in 2015 and grew as the government and the energy regulator for Great Britain, Ofgem, pushed to open up the market beyond the then big six players: British Gas, EDF, E.ON, npower, ScottishPower and SSE.
