Monday 17 June 2013

Can we afford energy efficeincy and renewable energy?



How much does increasing renewable energy cost on our household energy bills? A government report in March of this year has analysed how much we pay for what in our energy bills. Guess what, wholesale energy costs vastly outweigh the costs of energy and climate change policies. 55% of your gas bill covers wholesale gas costs and only 5% is allocated to energy and climate change policies.

When it comes to electricity 37% of your bill covers the price of wholesale electricity and 14% covers energy and climate change policies.

Energy and climate change polices includes a raft of measures ECO – energy company obligation e.g. a requirement on energy companies to ‘support households in improving the energy efficiency of their homes’ mainly concentrating on helping the vulnerable and those on lower incomes to heat their homes affordably and helping households living in harder and more expensive to improve homes e.g. those with hard to treat cavity wall insulation and solid wall insulation.

In addition, the polices will reduce energy prices in the future. The average gas bill will be cut by 13% by 2030. The average electricity bill will initially reduce by 11% by 2020 but is then predicted to rise by 10% up to 2030. Overall the impact of these polices on average energy bills overall is a 3% reduction by 2030.

To put this in context, we currently have the lowest gas prices in the EU 15 (this excludes Central and Eastern Europe.) We also have the 3rd or 4th lowest electricity prices. And we spend less on energy and climate change polices than almost any other EU15 country, 3rd lowest. http://www.energypriceindex.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HEPI_Press_Release_January20131.pd

So don’t let the climate change deniers win – energy efficiency and renewable energy are worth the price – and the price is not as high as they would have you believe.

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