A report claims a lack of investment in home insulation and green tech cost households up to £1,900 on their energy bills last year.
The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said greater investment and faster take up of home insulation, solar panels, renewables, heat pumps and electric cars over the last decade could have delivered savings totalling £70 billion by 2023. The UK would have saved £56 billion in the first two years of the gas crisis in 2022 and 2023, as insulation and clean tech would have reduced demand for expensive oil and gas, according to the study from the think tank.
However, successful policies for boosting home insulation and solar were scrapped over the past decade and there has been slow progress and delays on measures for new homes, heat pumps, electric cars and renewables, the ECIU said. A household with all the available technologies would have saved £1,900 on their bills in 2023, the report calculates.
If Government support schemes for energy efficiency, which were cut in 2013, had been maintained, an extra 10 million homes would have received insulation upgrades, saving £12 billion on bills over the decade, it said. The average property with a Band D energy efficiency rating would have saved £320 in 2023 if their home had been upgraded to Band C, reducing the impact of soaring costs of the energy crisis.
The report says that most of the extra energy costs were paid by families, with some help from the Government's price freeze. If the UK had kept up with solar panel fitting like in 2011 and used more green energy, it could have cuts bills considerably.
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Dr Simon Cran-McGreehin from the ECIU said: "Investment in these net zero technologies brings returns in the form of lower energy bills, reduced vulnerability to volatile international gas markets and the prospect of real energy independence for the UK. A lack of investment leaves families colder and poorer and has left the country in a real hole in the gas crisis at a cost of tens of billions of pounds."
A spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero commented: "We do not recognise these highly speculative figures, they ignore the fact the proportion of homes in England with an EPC rating of C or above has risen from just 14% in 2010 to almost half today. We are helping families to make changes, increasing the boiler upgrade scheme by 50% making it one of the most generous in Europe. Our plan is working and applications are now up by nearly 50% compared to last year."
"The UK is also a world leading renewables sector home to the five largest operational wind farms in the world, with renewables accounting for over 40% of our electricity, up from 7% in 2010."
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