The UK government must urgently bring forward billions of pounds in pledged spending on insulation and heat pumps, and reinstate the universal credit uplift to help poor households cope with soaring energy and food prices, civil society groups have told ministers.
Vulnerable households are already facing stark choices between heating and eating, with hardship set to become even worse before next winter as rises in the cost of living bite, fuelled by the war in Ukraine.
Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Save the Children and Age UK are among 33 civil society groups that have written to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, the chancellor of the exchequer, Rishi Sunak, and the business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, to call for £3.6bn for insulation grants to all households, and an extra £4bn by 2025 to install heat pumps in place of gas boilers.
The letter, seen by the Guardian, also called for benefits to be increased in line with April’s inflation rate, rather than the lower 3.1% planned, and for the £20 uplift in universal credit that was part of the Covid-19 response to be restored.
The government promised in its 2019 election manifesto to spend more than £9bn on insulation and energy efficiency for British homes. Ministers are understood to be finalising plans over the coming days for a new energy security strategy that will boost renewables such as wind and solar power, and to pump more oil and gas from the North Sea, while the chancellor will unveil the spring statement, or “mini budget”, next Wednesday.
But climate and poverty campaigners are concerned that measures that could provide rapid relief to poorer households, such as home insulation, will be sidelined as debate within government rages over projects such as fracking and new licences for the North Sea.
Juliet Phillips, senior policy adviser at E3G, one of the groups behind the letter, said: “Green homes are the most obvious energy security solution no one is talking about. Energy security starts at home: this means supercharging a renovation wave to cut energy bills and permanently reduce the exposure of families to volatile international gas markets – boosting energy efficiency and rolling out electric heat pumps.”
Fracking is unlikely to be viable on a large scale in the UK, and would not produce any gas for years. New exploration in the North Sea would also take years, if not decades, to produce gas. However, some Conservative backbenchers and sections of the media have called for them as a response to surging energy prices.
Officials are also understood to have engaged in informal early-stage contacts with EDF, Drax and Uniper, which operate coal-fired or biomass power stations, about the possibility of delaying planned closures of coal-fired units, or increasing coal burning. However, the Guardian understands that this is a contingency plan that is unlikely to be necessary as the government believes electricity supplies in excess of those recommended by the National Grid have already been secured through its contracts for a different scheme.
A government spokesperson said: “The UK remains committed to ending the use of coal power by 2024. We will be setting out plans to boost our long-term energy resilience and domestic supply shortly. The operation of UK coal plants is ultimately a commercial matter and we have made no formal request to EDF.”
Rebecca Newsom, head of politics at Greenpeace UK, said insulation and support for vulnerable households were more effective ways of reducing Russia’s ability to weaponise energy prices. “This is a fossil fuel crisis, and new fossil fuels from the likes of fracking or new North Sea oil and gas aren’t going to solve our problems. We can reach true energy freedom and stand up to [Vladimir] Putin, but that needs the government to back properly funded measures to support households, accelerate renewables and properly fund home upgrades to reduce our use of gas altogether,” she said.
Children were already feeling the impact of the sudden increases in the cost of living that have followed the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, campaigners said. Dan Paskins, director of UK impact at Save the Children UK, said: “Parents are telling us they’re struggling to meet basic needs, leaving them having to make impossible choices between heating their homes and buying clothes for their children, and children are paying the price. Without action, things are only going to get harder.”
There is good evidence that insulation schemes work, according to the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, a thinktank, which has calculated that energy efficiency measures installed in the last decade save UK householders nearly £1.2bn a year. Those savings could have been much higher, but the rates of home upgrades dropped sharply after the government abandoned its flagship scheme in 2015.
Heat pumps could also be rolled out far faster, according to Jan Rosenow, director at the Regulatory Assistance Project thinktank. He found that the UK could eliminate fossil fuel imports completely by increasing insulation and installing heat pumps in place of gas boilers. Heat pumps will be about £260 a year cheaper than gas boilers from April.
According to the letter sent to the government, the costs of grants to vulnerable households, and incentives that could be offered to all households for insulation and the switch to heat pumps, could be met through the government’s £16bn green gilt programme, the UK Infrastructure Bank, and a new green funding scheme from the Bank of England.