The Energy Bill Revolution

A report released today by the Energy Bill Revolution has revealed Treasury hypocrisy over financial support for the energy sector.

It reveals that although the Treasury has so far refused to recycle carbon tax to help households reduce their energy bills by making them more energy efficient, it allows other taxes to be recycled to support renewable energy and fracking for gas.

Using carbon tax to make homes highly energy efficient is a demand of the Energy Bill Revolution, an alliance of almost 200 major UK charities, businesses, unions, consumer and health groups.  It is the biggest fuel poverty coalition in the world.

———————————–

They are calling for carbon revenue from the Emission Trading Scheme and Carbon Support Price to be used to finance a major infrastructure programme to make homes highly energy efficient. This is seen as the only long term solution to high energy bills and fuel poverty.  The Energy Bill Revolution revealed last year that the UK has the oldest and worst insulated housing stock of any country in western Europe.

The report, ‘The economic case for recycling carbon tax into energy efficiency’ reveals 7 taxes that the UK recycles or hypothecates, worth £4 billion, every year to support green and social policies and community development. These include the Renewables Obligation, Feed in Tariffs, the Climate Change Levy, Landfill Tax, London Congestion Charge and Community Infrastructure Levy. Most recently Government has announced that councils can keep 100% of business rates from fracking, estimated by Government to be worth £1.7m per year for each fracking site.

The report also reveals that 13 countries in the EU are using proceeds from the EU-ETS auctions to finance climate and energy efficiency programmes[1]. It includes 7 of the 10 countries expecting the largest ETS revenues. France and Germany, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia and Lithuania have all made energy efficiency of the building stock a priority for the use of their ETS revenues.

Germany has committed €1.5bn of investment in 2013 in making homes more energy efficient with carbon revenues contributing to this figure.France has announced an ambitious national refurbishment programme which is expected to benefit from €1bn of carbon revenues in 2016.

The Treasury announced last year that both carbon taxes from the ETS and Carbon Support Price were classified as ‘green taxes’ which means that their principal objective is officially to help protect the environment.  Despite this they still refuse to recycle them to reduce carbon emissions. Research shows that the money raised from carbon taxes when spent on energy efficiency can result in eight times more energy savings than caused by the price rise alone[2].

Ed Matthew, Director of the Energy Bill Revolution said “The real reason the Treasury has opposed carbon tax recycling into energy efficiency is because they don’t want to reduce their control over public spending and other departments. When will they understand that this is not their tax revenue. It belongs to the people and we want it back to warm up our homes. Using carbon tax to make households more energy efficient is by far the best long term solution to both bring down energy bills and end fuel poverty“

ENDS

Does your MP support the Energy Bill Revolution?

See the original report here

Notes to Editors:

1.   The Energy Bill Revolution is the biggest fuel poverty alliance in the world. It is a coalition of almost 200 leading UK charities, businesses, unions, consumer and health groups. It is calling on the Government to use carbon tax revenue to support a major infrastructure programme to make UK homes super energy efficient. See: www.energybillrevolution.org

2. Cold Homes Week is from 3^rd to 7^th February 2014: It is a week of action by the Energy Bill Revolution alliance to draw attention to the plight of those in fuel poverty.

3. Carbon Tax: Over the next 15 years the UK Treasury will collect from consumers £60 billion in carbon taxes on electricity.   These come from the auctioning of EU-ETS allowances. If the proceeds from the carbon taxes were spent on energy e.fficiency 90 per cent of these households could be lifted out of fuel poverty.

4. UK Tax Recycling: The table below lists seven other tax-and-spend programmes that together already collect £5.2 billion and resulted in recycled spending of £4.0 billion in 2012/13:

* In the 2013 Autumn Statement the chancellor announced energy companies would be provided funding for Warm Home Discount from 2014

** £800m was raised from the Climate Change Levy in 2012-13 net of the reduced rate paid by firms that are in climate change agreements.

5. European carbon tax recycling:  The following countries inEurope are recycling carbon tax to support climate and energy efficiency programmes: