Julia Lopez MP has welcomed the Prime Minister’s Energy Price Guarantee (EPG). The EPG will give people certainty with their bills and will apply from 1 October and will discount the unit cost of gas and electricity use.
The EPG will ensure that a typical household in Great Britain pays an average £2,500 a year on their energy bill, for the next 2 years, from 1 October 2022. The consumer saving will be based on usage, but a typical household will save at least £1,000 a year (based on current prices from October). Energy suppliers will be fully compensated for the cost of the Energy Price Guarantee.
This guarantee includes the temporary suspension of green levies and the EPG comes in addition to the £400 Energy Bill Support Scheme. Moreover, an additional discretionary fund will be available for those households who are outside of the schemes. This includes households not on standard gas/electricity contracts, on heat networks or not connected to the grid in the usual way.
The government has also announced the Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS) which will provide a discount on wholesale gas and electricity prices for all non-domestic customers whose current gas and electricity prices have been significantly inflated in light of global energy prices. This will include all UK businesses, the voluntary sector like charities and the public sector such as schools and hospitals. This support will be equivalent to the EPG put in place for households.
This will see the government set a Supported Wholesale Price which is a discounted price per unit of gas and electricity. This price is expected to be £211 per MWh for electricity and £75 per MWh for gas, less than half the wholesale prices anticipated this winter. It will apply to fixed contracts agreed on or after 1 April 2022, as well as to deemed, variable and flexible tariffs and contracts. It will apply to energy usage from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023, running for an initial 6 month period for all non-domestic energy users. The savings will be first seen in October bills, which are typically received in November.
The government will publish a review into the operation of the scheme in three months to inform decisions on future support after March 2023. The review will focus in particular on identifying the most vulnerable non-domestic customers and how the government will continue assisting them with energy costs.
More in-depth information on the Energy Price Guarantee and the Energy Bill Relief Scheme can be viewed here - Energy bills support factsheet - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
