UK Goverment deal – welcome but lacks energy

This week the UK Government announced that it had agreed a £910m deal with the largest energy companies in order to tackle the problems of rising energy costs. As we posted on a few weeks ago, there are measures that every household can take in order to increase their energy efficiency and save on energy bills. Well, it seems that the Government has taken this advice on board, and is going for a mass awareness campaign targeting those who are struggling the most to pay their energy bills. Amongst the measures that are outlined are:

• Free cavity wall and loft insulation for pensioners and poor households

• 50% off cost of insulation for all households

• Freeze on this year’s bills for half a million poor consumers

• Partial reversal of cut to warm front programme giving free central heating to poorest pensioners

• Cold weather payments to go up from £8.50 a week to £25 a week for pensioners, disabled people and unemployed families with children under five – if temperatures drop below zero for seven consecutive days

This is all very well and good, and we wholeheartedly agree with the attempt to get the energy efficiency message across. We applaud the government and the energy companies for addressing the issue. Hopefully, this will help re-ignite the green energy momentum that has been lost in recent months. There are a great number of people who will benefit greatly from this scheme. This should bring the rest of the country into line with with Scotland where pensioners have been entitled to free central heating for a few years now. Government officials are literally going to take to go door-to-door in an attempt to get the energy efficiency message across – we wish them luck with that.

However, any of the efficiency effects achieved by this initial implementation are likely to be offset by the millions who fall through the cracks? – ie those that are not ‘poor’ enough to receive all the freebies or ‘rich’ enough to implement the measures themselves? The short answer to this is that they are going to prioritise. Is increasing the energy efficiency of their homes likely to be what people will spend on in the midst of the credit crunch and rising food and oil prices. Surely these are more of a priority for people at the moment than proper insulation. We fear it may be some time before these measures begin to have a meaningful impact.