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The government will tackle fuel poverty with a new energy efficiency scheme, including a supplier obligation costing around £640 million, energy minister Lord Bourne told MPs today.
Bourne, under-secretary of state for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), said that energy efficiency measures in the wake of the Green Deal and ECO would be “centric to fuel poverty.”
He told a meeting of the Energy and Climate Change committee that detailed plans for a single scheme to replace the Green Deal and ECO would not be set out until 2018, with a focus on “how we recast ECO”. He did not comment on how more affluent householders would be encouraged to improve energy efficiency – a key aim of the now defunct Green Deal.
Bourne said once ECO comes to a close in 2017, there will be a transitional year before an announcement about how it will be carried on, “likely by spring” the following year.
He said: “We are aiming to tackle the severe fuel poor first. We are also hoping to have access to more data by then… Households that can be identified as fuel poor will be prioritised – Ofgem will control that on our behalf.”
He added: “One element of the current ECO is very much focused on the fuel poor, but the other two are much more open.”
Roughly £1.2 billion per year will be needed to meet the government’s current fuel poverty target with a new supplier obligation costing around £640 million and the warm home discount scheme totalling around £320 million in addition to various other smaller schemes.
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