National Energy Action (NEA) has warned that millions of households in England ‘will still be in fuel poverty by end of decade’ due to the government’s slow progress on home energy efficiency targets.
The charity warned that the poorest households could be left paying on average £480 more a year on their energy bills due to living in cold, damp and unhealthy homes.
Fuel poverty is defined by the NEA as when a household needs to spend at least 10% of its income on keeping their home sufficiently warm. The charity has warned that the Government is expected to miss a legally binding target on upgrading the energy efficiency of homes “by a staggering margin”.
The charity commissioned consultants at Gemserv to write the report which revealed that the Government needs to address a funding gap of at least £18bn to ensure that fuel-poor homes in England are brought up to a reasonable standard of energy efficiency by the end of the decade.
The study found that plans to address fuel poverty through better home insulation and other efficiency upgrades had been overwhelmed by the scale of the energy cost crisis.
In England, the Government’s target is for all fuel poor households to reach an EPC rating of C by 2030.
Millions of households in fuel poverty
Adam Scorer, NEA chief executive, said: “Based on current ‘progress’, we estimate 3m households in England alone will still be trapped in fuel poverty by 2030 – the same number who are currently in fuel poverty in England. Three million households left cold, damp and unhealthy. Governments risk missing their legal targets, but those living in fuel poverty are at risk of so much more.”
Angus Brendan MacNeil, the chair of the energy security and net zero committee, said: “As a committee, we have heard countless times about the energy crisis continuing to have a devastating effect on the most vulnerable in our society. Millions of the poorest households across the UK continue to be exposed to the worst of the crisis due to the low level of energy efficiency in their homes.”
Caroline Flint, the chair of the Committee on Fuel Poverty, said: “While we cannot control global energy prices, we can and must insulate vulnerable people from current and future energy shocks by investing in our housing stock.
“Strategies for fuel poverty must be kept updated and need to be far more ambitious. If we do, we can all do so much more to help those who cannot currently afford to keep warm every winter and whose health and wellbeing is currently in serious risk.”
