Ed Matthew, Campaigns Director at the independent climate change
think tank E3G said:
"Cutting taxes from electricity bills is a crucial step
towards helping people to switch to clean energy. But
this is overshadowed by
the morally indefensible decision to
scrap the national home insulation scheme,
ECO. This is exactly the kind of sticking plaster
politics this government promised to end
and fatally undermines the best long-term solution to
fuel poverty. It will also cost 10,000 jobs
and prevent 1 million families from insulating their
homes in the next 4 years.
The Chancellor must reverse this cut and maximise
energy savings for the fuel poor.”
UK Government Commits ECO-cide
The Chancellor has announced a £150 cut to household energy bills
by removing some levies on electricity bills
into the Exchequer and axing the Energy Company
Obligation (ECO) scheme, the UK's biggest insulation
programme for households.
E3G estimates that this means that total funding for
green homes is being reduced from £20 billion to
£15 billion this Parliamentary
term – a cut of a quarter in warm homes
funding. Most of the cut will be
on insulation measures, with the scrapping
of ECO. This is the end of a 30 year
old supplier obligation for making homes more energy
efficient. In that time, 15 million homes have been helped, with
the average home saving £7,500, a total saving to the
country of £113 billion. It has led to a fall in total
household energy demand which has reduced the cost of new
power infrastructure.
As a result of poor regulation and oversight, the most
recent version of
ECO (ECO4) failed, with installation
of inadequate solid
wall insulation. The obligation needs to
be reformed to make it as successful
as previous iterations of the scheme. By
axing it, the Treasury has removed the main programme to
provide a long term solution to fuel poverty and one of
the most important schemes for reducing the cost of power
infrastructure in the future.
