Opinion: ‘Energy costs are getting too high’

It was an ominous thud, the letter hitting the doormat with a warning from the energy supplier of the unavoidable price hikes in the pipeline. For many families, it is already difficult to make household finances stack up, without this huge rise in fuel bills while energy companies resemble cash machines with huge payouts for shareholders.

If high gas prices are set to be the new normal, we need more from the government than a sticking plaster that fails to respond to the seriousness of the cost of living crisis or the climate crisis.

In October, the Green Party proposed a £320 winter fuel payment to all as an immediate measure to help people survive through the winter. This would have also have acted as a bridge towards future-proofing the country through a mass retrofit scheme and roll-out of renewable energy.

Regrettably, the government has opted to do the opposite of future-proofing households from further economic pain. Instead of a simple and effective payment to everybody as Greens suggested, they have put forward a buy-now-pay-later scheme which will create an additional burden for those on the lowest incomes further down the line.

We are all paying the price for the short-sightedness of previous Tory governments who sat on their hands, slowing down the essential transition away from fossil fuels and scrapping energy-efficiency measures like insulation which would cut demand.

The solution lies not in a rapid U-turn to the fossil fuel era as demanded by some Tory MPs but in rapidly speeding up the transition to renewable energy so we address the climate emergency and make ourselves less vulnerable to global price rises.

Ministers should support the growing calls for a windfall tax on the huge profits of the energy companies, together with measures that treat energy as an essential public good.

BP’s profits have risen to £9.5bn, the highest for eight years, on the back of soaring energy prices, plunging millions into fuel poverty. This is dirty money. The Greens want to see an emergency ‘dirty profits tax’ imposed on companies like BP that make most of their profits out of pollution.

The current tax on the profits of oil giants should rise from 10 per cent to 35 per cent and the proceeds used to provide an immediate uplift in payments to people qualifying for income support schemes.

This is only slightly higher than the 32 per cent windfall tax used by George Osborne on North Sea oil and gas companies that raised £2 billion in 2011. This will make the polluter pay and is a fair tax, helping those in greatest need at such a difficult time.

Most urgently of all, we need a nationwide home insulation programme to give people warm homes, cut energy use and create thousands of good, green jobs.

High gas prices will be with us for some time. We need to leave fossil fuels behind us and in the ground as soon as possible and create an energy system fit for the future.