In 2012, CSE and the Association for the Conservation of Energy (ACE) produced two significant reports for Consumer Focus (now part of Citizens Advice).

(ACE is now merged with the Association for Decentralised Energy, and Consumer Focus is now part of Citizens Advice.)

Both reports looked at customers’ historic and future financial contributions to energy policy goals and their views about having to make these contributions.

Download the two reports using the buttons below.

Read more about each report.

Report 1) The impact of future energy policy on consumer bills

What’s causing energy bills to rise?

For many, the blame lies with the impact of the Government’s energy and climate change policies. This often result in direct or indirect levies on energy bills. Government and the Committee on Climate Change have responded by publishing assessments of the impacts of these policies on energy bills now, and the likely impacts by 2020.

We reviewed the government’s response and produced an independent set of assumptions. Six scenarios were used to explore the changes to energy bills through to 2020, combining three ‘fuel price’ scenarios (made up of wholesale, network, metering and other non-policy costs met by suppliers) with two ‘policy mix’ scenarios i.e. low and high impact.

What our report concluded:

• Across all of our scenarios and across fuel types, the factor most likely to determine the average fuel bills in 2020 will be the costs of wholesale energy (fossil fuel prices) and the networks. It is not true to say that policy costs are driving the cost of energy bills.
• In our scenarios, energy bills in 2020 are never both higher than in 2011 and higher than if the Government adopted a ‘do-nothing’ approach, abandoning all energy and climate policies this year. Overall the research finds the Government’s policy mix is an effective insurance against rising fossil fuel prices for the average customer.
• Policy costs tend to be levied on electricity bills rather than gas bills. This puts pressure on those heating with electricity, and requires an ambitious and successful products policy in order to help mitigate the impact of the higher prices.
• Additional assistance must therefore be aimed at supporting those heating with electricity, who are more likely to be low income and in fuel poverty.

CSE’s CEO Simon Roberts said: “It’s really important to get this level of granularity in the analysis of distributional impacts to understand who pays and who benefits. The issue of affordability picks up on some of our recent work for Ofgem where we identified a group of low income high consumers who use electricity for heating.”

Download the full report here.

Report 2) Environmental and social levies: past, present and future

Are consumers’ bills paying for environmental policies?

The principle of recovering the costs of environmental and social policies via energy bills or taxes is not new. This study aimed to calculate the likely average cost per household associated with such policies from 1990 to 2020.

How much have consumers paid, and what for?

In 1990, just one environmental energy policy – the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation (NFFO) – imposed a cost of around £52 per year on the average household energy bill. This cost on energy bills remained relatively constant between 1990 and 2000.

In 2001, the cost of supporting nuclear power and decommissioning was moved to the public finances, to be recovered via taxation. Consequently, the amount contributed to policies via energy bills fell to an all-time low of £1 per year.

From 1990 to 2020, the cost to households of supporting nuclear power falls sharply, from around £86 per household in 2010 to an expected £14 in 2020 (taken from tax). The average annual cost of the Renewables Obligation rises from £19 in 2010 to an expected £37 in 2020. The EU Emissions Trading System sees a similar scale of increase, from around £22 to £27. The cost of supporting energy efficiency measures remains relatively constant at an average of around £29 per household.

The cumulative cost to taxpayers and energy customers of delivering a low carbon energy policy in the UK from 1990 to 2010, and projected costs from 2011 to 2020, are illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2.

CSE’s Ian Preston said: “Despite press coverage of the cost of environmental policies and the more recent energy supplier rhetoric that seeks to blame price rises on policy costs, it’s interesting to see how long we have been paying for these measures and the extensive use of taxpayers’ money which often goes un-noticed.”

Download the full report here.