The plans, highlighted by PrintWeek last autumn, saw British Gas offering a 10 bonus to customers switching from paper to online bills.

According to a survey carried out by mail and document management company Pitney Bowes, around a third of all UK consumer bills will be produced electronically by the end of 2005.

The survey, conducted across 1,000 top UK companies, revealed that the telecoms industry would account for 51% of all bills produced electronically.

British Gas, the UKs largest domestic energy supplier sends out 70m paper bills every year, and has become one of the first to offer discounted paperless billing (PrintWeek, 4 September 2003).

A spokesman for British Gas said the new service had been introduced after a survey showed customers were keen to deal with their utilities online.

Almost 40% of its 17m customers said they would consider making their energy accounts paperless. Although unable to confirm its print budget for billing, all of British Gas bills are produced in-house.

Despite e-billing being in the early stages, some 150,000 customers have already signed up, with more than 1m set to receive their bills via email by
next year.

British Gas has teamed up with environmental group Future Forests so that for every 100 customers who switch to paperless billing it will plant a tree at Northcombe Wood in Devon. The trees planted will also help to absorb harmful carbon emissions.

Powergen has also adopted the environmental theme, with 100,000 customers signing up to manage their accounts through its EnergyOnline website.

It estimates that if one in five UK households were to change to internet billing for their energy and banking needs, more than 75,000 trees could be saved over the next five years.

This is based on 21.3m households in the UK receiving one item of correspondence per year.

by Andy Scott