Energy Supply and Services DPS

Fixed energy contracts lock in a unit rate for the duration of the contract, typically 12 to 36 months. You know exactly what you’ll pay per unit of gas or electricity for the entire term, regardless of what happens in the wholesale market. This gives you budget certainty and removes the risk of unexpected cost increases, which is particularly valuable for public sector organisations that need to set budgets well in advance and can’t absorb sudden spikes in energy costs. The trade-off is that if wholesale prices fall significantly during the contract term, you’re committed to the higher fixed rate.

Flexible contracts take a more active approach to energy purchasing. Rather than locking in a single price at one point in time, flexible contracts allow you to buy energy in tranches over a period, spreading your purchasing decisions across multiple market moments. This can result in a lower average cost if the market moves in your favour, but it also carries more risk because prices could move against you. Flexible contracts suit organisations that have some appetite for market exposure, are comfortable with a degree of cost variability, and want the potential to benefit from favourable market movements. Inprova’s team provides market intelligence and procurement guidance throughout the flexible contract period, helping you make informed purchasing decisions rather than relying on guesswork. The right choice depends on your organisation’s risk appetite, budget planning cycle, and the importance of cost certainty versus potential savings.

Energy supply and energy efficiency are two sides of the same decarbonisation equation. While our Asset Decarbonisation and Retrofit DPS and frameworks cover the physical measures that reduce energy consumption, such as insulation, heat pumps, and building fabric improvements, your energy supply contracts determine the carbon intensity of the energy you’re still consuming. Procuring renewable electricity tariffs, green gas, or verified carbon-neutral supply can reduce your Scope 2 emissions without any physical changes to your buildings.

In England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, the Procurement Act 2023 requires contracting authorities to have regard to maximising public benefit; Scotland’s own procurement legislation carries an equivalent sustainable procurement duty. Aligning energy procurement with your organisation’s carbon reduction targets is a practical way to demonstrate this, wherever you’re based. For NHS and health bodies working towards their national net zero commitments, such as NHS England’s 2040 target, the energy supply contract is one of the most significant levers for reducing reported carbon emissions. For organisations subject to Carbon Reduction Plan requirements, being able to demonstrate that your energy supply strategy supports your carbon targets strengthens your compliance position. Inprova’s team can help you evaluate renewable and low-carbon supply options alongside traditional contracts, so your energy procurement supports your decarbonisation strategy rather than working against it. Quantum tracks energy contract performance and costs, giving you the data to report on both financial and environmental outcomes to boards, regulators, and funding bodies.

Yes, and this is one of the most common use cases. Public sector organisations managing large building portfolios, whether that’s an NHS trust with multiple hospital and clinic sites, a multi-academy trust with dozens of schools, a council with offices, leisure centres, libraries, and depots, or a blue light service with stations across a wide geography, often have energy consumption spread across many supply points with different consumption profiles, different meter types, and potentially different existing contract end dates.

The DPS accommodates this complexity. You can procure energy supply for your entire estate through a single competition, consolidating multiple supply points under one contract with one supplier. Alternatively, you can structure the procurement by site type, geography, or fuel type if that better reflects how your organisation manages its energy. For organisations with staggered contract end dates across different sites, Inprova’s team can help you develop a procurement strategy that aligns renewal dates over time, moving towards a consolidated approach that gives you greater buying power and simpler administration. For organisations that are already on the DPS, adding new sites as your estate changes, whether through expansion, reorganisation, or the acquisition of new buildings, is straightforward because the DPS stays open and flexible throughout its lifetime.

Wholesale energy markets are inherently volatile. Geopolitical events, weather patterns, supply disruptions, and regulatory changes can all cause significant price movements in short periods. For public sector organisations, this volatility creates budget risk. A contract timed badly can lock you into above-market rates for years. A contract left to roll over passively can expose you to spot market prices that are significantly higher than you’d have achieved through a structured procurement.

This DPS helps manage that risk in several ways. The panel of OFGEM-licensed suppliers provides genuine competition, so you’re not dependent on a single supplier’s pricing. Fixed contracts eliminate market risk entirely for the contract term. Flexible contracts spread your purchasing across multiple market moments, reducing the impact of any single bad timing decision. Collective purchasing aggregates your demand with other public sector buyers, giving you scale advantages that individual organisations can’t achieve alone. Inprova’s team provides market monitoring and timing guidance, so your procurement decisions are informed by current market intelligence rather than made in a vacuum. For procurement teams that don’t have specialist energy market expertise, this guidance is often the most valuable element of the DPS because it addresses the knowledge gap that leads to poorly timed or poorly structured energy contracts.

This DPS isn’t a supplier directory. Inprova provides end-to-end support covering the full energy procurement lifecycle. Before procurement, our team analyses your current energy consumption, contract arrangements, and costs to identify opportunities for improvement. We help you determine whether a fixed, flexible, or collective approach best suits your organisation’s risk appetite and budget planning requirements. During procurement, we manage the competition process through the DPS, evaluating supplier proposals against your published criteria and supporting you through to contract award.

After award, we don’t disappear. Inprova provides ongoing contract management including monitoring supplier performance, validating billing accuracy, and tracking consumption patterns. For flexible contracts, we provide market intelligence and purchasing guidance throughout the contract period. Quantum gives you visibility of energy costs alongside all your other Inprova contracts, so energy spend sits within your broader procurement data rather than being managed in isolation. For organisations that are also using our decarbonisation frameworks and DPS to improve building energy efficiency, having energy supply and energy efficiency procurement managed through the same partner means your consumption reduction investments and your supply contracts are aligned rather than working independently.

Many public sector organisations currently procure energy through brokers who earn commission from suppliers for placing contracts. While brokers can provide market access and timing advice, the commercial model creates an inherent conflict of interest: the broker’s revenue comes from the supplier, not from you. This can affect the transparency of the pricing and the impartiality of the advice.

The DPS operates differently. It’s a compliant procurement vehicle, established under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and accessed today by contracting authorities under the Procurement Act 2023 in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, or under Scotland’s own procurement legislation, with full transparency, competitive tendering, and documented evaluation criteria. When you run a competition through the DPS, all qualified suppliers on the panel are invited to bid against your published requirements. Pricing is transparent and competitive. The evaluation criteria are set by you, not by a broker. And Inprova’s procurement support is funded through the framework management model, not through supplier commissions, so our advice is aligned with your interests rather than the supplier’s. For public sector organisations that need to demonstrate compliant procurement and value for money to auditors, boards, and regulators, the DPS provides the governance and documentation that a broker arrangement typically doesn’t. Every competition is documented, every evaluation is structured, and every decision is auditable.