Cost of going green – higher energy bills and 1.7m more in fuel poverty

Published on Monday 1 December 2008 21:38

THE steps needed to achieve ambitious climate change targets will push 1.7 million more people in the UK into fuel poverty, a report has revealed.

The Committee on Climate Change, chaired by Lord Turner, has advised the government to reduce emissions by 42 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels – the amount necessary to reduce damaging greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will contain the threat of climate change.

However, the impact on the price of electricity and gas of measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions will increase the number of fuel-poor households by 1.7 million in 2022, the committee's report warned. The cost of taking them out of fuel poverty would be 500 million a year.

Greg Clark, the shadow energy and climate change secretary, argued that government energy policy over the past ten years had made the task of cutting emissions more "urgent and disruptive" than it need have been.

"In this context I am deeply concerned by the committee's assessment that up to 1.7 million households could be pushed into fuel poverty by the impact of the proposed carbon budgets," he said.

He added that British customers were already paying some of the highest fuel bills in Europe because the government had failed to prepare for the decline in North Sea oil and gas, and British homes were among the least energy-efficient.

Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said concerns over fuel poverty must not be used as an excuse not to go ahead with efforts to reduce emissions.

"We cannot ignore fuel poverty. We have had far too much for the past decade and now it cannot be used as an excuse to not do the right thing," he said.

Mr McLaren described the report as "unprecedented" and a "big step in the right direction".

However, he urged the Scottish Government to go even further and aim to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2020.

The Committee on Climate Change, an independent advisory body set up under the Climate Change Act, urged the government to reduce emissions of all greenhouse gases in the UK by at least 34 per cent relative to 1990 levels.

This should be increased to 42 per cent once a global deal to reduce emissions is achieved, it said in its report Building a Low-Carbon Economy.

In order to achieve the targets, Lord Turner's committee advised improving energy efficiency in buildings and industry, using carbon capture and storage technology in power stations, developing electric cars and public transport and using cleaner forms of electricity production such as renewable and nuclear power.

It recommended all fossil fuel power stations should be using carbon capture and storage technology by the early 2020s. The committee said the reductions could be achieved without harming the UK's economy, and at a cost of less than 1 per cent of GDP in 2020.

Lord Turner said: "Climate change poses a grave threat to human welfare, the environment and the economy. We need to act now."

The report came ahead of the Scottish Climate Change Bill, which is expected on Thursday.