Energy Reset: Act now before it’s too late

As part of Utility Week’s Energy Reset campaign, we present a series of perspectives on tackling the cost of living crisis. In our first piece Peter Smith, director of policy and advocacy at National Energy Action, outlines how without any additional support, millions will sink into further debt and many will turn off their heating, putting them at risk of serious health complications or even premature death.

Public concern over the impact of rising energy prices is growing day by day. While increases to the GB wide cap will take effect at the start of April, customers in Northern Ireland have already been hit hard by successive, unprecedented, increases.

The huge uncertainty of what is about to be inflicted across the rest of the UK is already taking its toll, especially for the poorest in our society who are already highly anxious that they can’t afford the cost of energy and already facing wider soaring costs for other essentials.

Without any additional support, millions will sink further into debt, many will turn off the heating, leaving them at acute risk of serious ill-health. This puts further unwanted strain on our stretched health services or even causes premature death. For all too many frail people, it is already too late. Even before the energy crisis, on average, 80 people die per day due to a cold home in the winter in the UK.

At the time of writing, no announcement has yet been made on how the UK government will seek to mitigate the impact of higher energy bills (across GB or UK). All we know is both the PM and chancellor have publicly stated they ‘recognise’ the impact higher prices are having and they are ‘considering’ the need to provide further support.

The good news is that there are several steps that can be taken now to support vulnerable energy customers and we have called for targeted options by the UK Government to directly support the most vulnerable energy consumers who are always worst hit when bills rise. In summary, we want to see the following actions:

• Targeted emergency support for the most vulnerable consumers introduced by the UK government without any delay
• Keep and expand progressive programmes such as Warm Home Discount (WHD) and the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) but give consideration for removing ‘legacy’ policy costs on bills
• Ensure Ofgem honour their commitment to make the needs of vulnerable consumers their key priority. Instead of reducing the value of current support this would mean taking the opportunity to provide deeper price protection or a new mandatory social tariff to help make energy more affordable for a discrete and well-defined set of low-income energy customers
• Maintain and expand energy efficiency programmes to permanently reduce needless energy waste in our homes

Our proposals are not perfect but key actions can be introduced quickly and would directly reduce prices for the poorest households at a relatively modest cost. More broadly, they would demonstrate a strong commitment to supporting the most impacted customers through the current energy crisis.

We hope the UK government and regulator urgently respond to the scale of the energy crisis and confirm their plans as soon as possible before it’s too late.