London Mayor Boris Johnson and energy secretary Ed Davey must do more to ensure Londoners aren't left out in the cold by rocketing energy bills.
Murad Qureshi AM is a Labour member of the London Assembly
Today is Fuel Poverty Awareness Day, yet with energy prices skyrocketing by up to 11 per cent this winter it is unlikely many people are unaware of this growing crisis.
National Energy Action estimates that as a direct result of the recent round of price hikes, an additional 266,000 households were made fuel poor. That is equivalent to a town a little bigger than Stoke-on-Trent.
In London the picture is stark. Before the price hikes, well over half a million London households were fuel poor. Yet London has got a raw deal from the energy companies – and not just on pricing.
Since April 2008, energy companies have been required to deliver home insulation measures to households as part of the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, a programme that was renewed by the coalition following the election.
However, figures from the Energy Savings Trust show that while 14.7% of homes nationally have received measures, the number for London is only 7.2%.
London has been hindered because it is in general more expensive to insulate homes in London due to the higher occurrence of solid wall properties and flats. Despite their huge profits, this has given energy companies little incentive to retrofit homes in London when they can do it much cheaper in other regions.
The energy companies’ shortfall has been matched by a failure of the mayor to deliver his own target to retrofit 200,000 homes in London by 2012. In the end, the Mayor delivered in 88,000 homes.
What is worse, from this April the Mayor will no longer be directly funding home retrofit measures and will instead rely on those very same energy companies to retrofit London homes once the new Energy Company Obligation and Green Deal are fully introduced.
This is a dangerous strategy and one that could leave Londoners cold.
CERT essentially failed due to the lack of regional targets compelling energy companies to deliver their obligations in London – allowing a flight of measures out of London and into the regions where retrofitting was cheaper. But despite the stronger focus on solid wall insulation within ECO, these regional targets are still absent. Furthermore, the lack of interest so far in the Green Deal should be a worry for the Mayor.
But the situation is worse than that.
As a result of the gap between the end of the existing retrofitting schemes and the new schemes becoming fully functional, the Insulation Industry Forum predicted 625 jobs will be lost in London during 2013.
The energy secretary, Ed Davey, has failed to commit to introducing regional targets. Given the evidence, this should be a minimum assurance he – particularly as a London MP – should be instituting within the scheme. Without this the government is letting down hard pressed households who could desperately use a little help to reduce their energy bills.
See also:
• Osborne’s dash for gas will worsen fuel poverty – December 6th, 2012
• We need a new approach to tackling fuel poverty – November 9th, 2011
• Warnings over fuel poverty targets as fat cat energy chief enjoys £2 million bonus – July 25th, 2011
• Westminster must take on energy giants to prevent fuel poverty – June 8th, 2011
• Fuel poverty and social inequality should be the focus – not fuel cost – March 17th, 2011
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20 Responses to “Londoners shouldn’t be left out in the cold – Davey and Boris need to act”
Newsbot9
Ah yes, so you’re virulently against growth, politician.
I mean a rising GDP, you hum and whistle and deny.
LB
The government has a deficit. How does rising GDP help the government? Step by step. …
Newsbot9
Sigh.
LB
And for that they need money. Wonga. Hard cash.
So are they going to borrow and dump it on future generations?
Are they going to print, and screw people with inflation?
Or are they going to take money now from people? In which case who gets hit.
30% overspend. 50% of the UK economy is the state. They need to put up taxes by a huge amount, just to balance the books.
That’s the Tory plan. Small cuts, massive tax rises in the hope that gets more cash. Hence bugger all growth
Labour want more spending. No doubt more tax rises like the Tories. But they want to borrow more.
Both of them have looted the money people gave them for their pensions. All of it.
Newsbot9
Nope, the Tory plan is to cut services massively and hope it’ll save cash. You want to collapse the economy and hope we’ll someday be able to buy things from abroad again.
Neither is a good idea.
The reality is, the tax take needs to primarily come from where the wealth is – capital.