Eon backs stamp duty rebates for energy efficiency upgrades

Suppliers have backed tax breaks for homeowners and landlords that carry out energy efficiency upgrades, as speculation mounts that such measures will feature in the chancellor’s Autumn Statement later this month.

In its submission to the House of Commons energy security and net zero committee’s inquiry into heating for homes, Eon has backed the introduction of an Energy Saving Stamp Duty Incentive.

The proposal would see home owners receive a stamp duty rebate if they undertake energy efficiency renovations within the first 12 to 18 months of purchasing a property. It resembles the ‘Rebate to Renovate’ package, mooted by a coalition of Conservative-supporting thinktanks, which ministers are understood to be examining ahead of the Autumn Statement.

Eon’s submission also supports proposals which would allow landlords to offset energy efficiency improvements against rental income and therefore their income tax.

In order to make such investment more attractive for landlords, the supplier backs sustainability thinktank E3G’s proposal to introduce an enhanced version of the Landlords Energy Saving Allowance, which was in place between 2004 and 2015.

The submission also supports requiring only a ‘small’ contribution from ‘able to pay’ customers to energy efficiency upgrades in streets where such works are being carried out for free in the majority of homes because their occupiers are on low incomes or in social housing.

Enabling schemes for ‘able to pay’ and fully funded customers to dovetail would enable investment to be focussed on a street by street basis, which delivers more efficient results, it says: “Providing larger budgets to enable whole streets to be treated at the same time would help to drive down the installation cost of the retrofit.”

Eon also calls for the government to support the sale of hybrid heat pumps, which would enable households to get used to how the electrified devices work.

It suggests that encouraging the uptake of these devices, which work as heat pumps the bulk of the time and have a gas boiler that kicks in when temperatures are particularly low and demand on the grid is highest, will help to defuse the ‘rather polarised and unhelpful’ debate over home heating.

In its submission to the same inquiry, Good Energy calls for VAT cuts for low-carbon technologies and home energy efficiency improvements.

And it is imperative that moves to rebalance social and environmental levies on electricity and gas bills should not be “delayed further”, says Good Energy: “The conversation about the apportionment of costs across electricity and gas bills should not be forgone on account of political sensitivity or an approaching election.”