I am puzzled at the universality of the furore. This April, each household in Britain is being told to brace itself for absolutely enormous hikes in electricity bills. The trade body Energy UK is publicly warning about 50% uplifts in charges.
The reason given? Nothing to do with extra distribution or retail expenses. But apparently entirely to do with the escalation in the worldwide cost of natural gas, putting up wholesale costs dramatically.
But there is a large number of electricity consumers who should be in a position to avoid any such increases. These are the customers of Ovo and so of SSE, of Shell Energy, of Good Energy, and indeed of myriad other ‘green’ residential electricity suppliers. Because all of these customers have long been assured by their electricity supplier that all of the electricity that is being sold to them is generated entirely from non-fossil fuel sources.
And, as we have also been told endlessly, the cost of renewable electricity generation has not been increasing dramatically over the past year. Instead, the price of purchasing most renewables for electricity generation has been dropping like a stone, year on year. Thus, presumably insulating such happy households from any need to endure any hikes in their fuel bills, let alone 50% increases.
I am sure that the vast majority of my thousands of faithful readers will already be signed up with one of these eco-friendly companies. And I am equally sure each of them will let me know should any of these suppliers be seeking to increase their electricity prices this spring too.
