The company Auxilione predicts that in April 2023 British households will pay £6,552 (€7,769) a year for the energy they use.
London, Thanasis Gavos
Friday’s announcements about the new increase from October to the ceiling charge per kilowatt hour about the energy consumed by households in Britain is anxiously awaited by the country’s inhabitants.
Based on the current rate cap, an average household on a basic variable rate account pays £1,971 (€2,337) a year for typical energy use.
Today’s latest estimate from Auxilione consulting company, which takes into account yesterday’s further rise in natural gas prices, puts the October charge cap at £3,576 a year (€4,240).
Looking longer term, the company predicts that by April 2023 UK households will be paying £6,552 (€7,769) a year for the energy they use.
This estimate comes after yesterday’s Citi bank analysis which pegged the average household’s energy bill at £5,816 (€6,898) next April.
Based on this scenario, economist Professor Richard Murphy calculated that a household with an average income would be forced to pay 18% of its income for the electricity and natural gas it would consume. This means “energy poverty” for a huge proportion of British households, he noted.
“It will be literally impossible for 60% and perhaps more of British households to cope. “Without massive, planned intervention now… we face economic and political collapse,” the British professor warned.
In an interview on BBC radio, energy giant EDF’s director of customer services Philip Komare warned that British energy consumers are facing the specter of a “dramatic and devastating winter”.
As he added, agreeing with Professor Murphy’s analysis, “as of January half of British households may be in energy poverty”.
Meanwhile, Utilita chief executive Bill Bullen has become the second UK energy company executive to call on the government to freeze the cap on household energy charges. However, he told Sky News, the measure would support households and in effect remove energy prices from inflation.
The CEO of the much larger energy company Octopus Energy, Greg Jackson, made the same request on Monday. In further statements this morning and wanting to give a perhaps more understandable order of magnitude for increases in the wholesale gas market, Mr Jackson told BBC radio that if the same increases were to be seen in the price of beer, then a one-pint glass served in pubs would cost £25 (€29.6 a glass).
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