Carbon floor price to push up energy bills

Commenting on predictions that the new carbon floor limit announced in yesterday's Budget could see household electricity bills increase by 4% in three years, Ann Robinson, Director of Consumer Policy at uSwitch.com, says: "This is just the start, not the end of the story. There is a long multi-billion pound shopping list of investment required to secure our longer-term supply, cut carbon, boost energy efficiency and roll-out smart metering into all homes and unfortunately British households can expect to be footing the bill.

"What is clear is that consumers are paying the price for a disjointed and incoherent energy policy which is allowing stealth taxes and expensive little extras to sneak onto our energy bills. The average household energy bill is already £1,132 a year with £84 of that made up by hidden taxes. The fact is that the Government doesn't actually know what the total cost of all this will be and therefore cannot tell us what the real impact on household energy bills will be. This investment is beginning to look like a runaway train that will start to make energy increasingly unaffordable in this country."