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The Energy Bill

18 May 2011

The Energy Bill ( 84kb)

The Energy Bill, currently going through Parliament seeks to improve energy efficiency and to encourage low-carbon energy production.  It also sets out how Britain’s energy supplies will be made more secure.  The Bill is in 4 Parts. Part 1 – Energy Efficiency – is of particular interest to Citizens Advice and other organisations campaigning for the eradication of fuel poverty.  

Part 1 Chapter 1 of the Bill creates the legislative framework for the Green Deal, which will allow private companies to make energy efficiency measures available to every household – whether owned or rented - at no upfront cost, with the cost of this paid back from the saving on customers' energy bills.  Chapter 2 commits the Government to a review of energy efficiency in the private rented sector in England and Wales and gives the Secretary of State the power to introduce a minimum energy efficiency standard for the sector, depending on the outcome of this review.  Chapter 4 introduces an Energy Company Obligation (ECO) on companies to provide funding for energy efficiency measures on hard to treat homes where the cost of the measures will be higher than the expected resultant energy bill savings.

Key points:

• The Bill must ensure the Green Deal presents a fair deal for consumers by strengthening and adding to the consumer protections it already contains.
• In particular, it must make provision for redress; it must clarify how Green Deal payments will be collected from customers with pre-payment meters and those in arrears; and it must protect customers, especially vulnerable customers, from disconnection for non-payment of Green Deal charges.
• Though we welcome the Bill and its aims to improve the energy efficiency of people’s homes we believe it is not an appropriate means of addressing fuel poverty.  We are concerned that with the phasing out of Warm Front grants by 2014, there will be no taxpayer funded measures in England available to tackle fuel poverty.  Additional measures are needed if the Government is to meet its statutory target to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016.
• Capital funding available through the Energy Company Obligation is a worryingly regressive means of funding energy efficiency measures.  At the very least it must be effectively targeted at those at high risk of fuel poverty and we believe it must be supplemented by public money to fund energy efficiency improvements for vulnerable households.
• The Bill must set a deadline of no later than 2016 after which it will be an offence for a landlord to re-let or market for rent a property in England and Wales which is an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band F or G, and a date before 2020 by which it will become an offence to let a property of EPC Band E or lower.
• We welcome the provisions in clause 72, which will compel energy suppliers to provide customers with information about the cheapest tariff available to them and how to switch to it on their energy bill.

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