Wednesday 12 November 2014

"Government Electricity Rebate"

At the bottom of my latest gas and electric bill is a line saying "Government Electricity Rebate" and a credit of £12.

Seriously?

Yes.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change explains:

Rising energy bills have been causing concern for many households. Rising wholesale gas prices have contributed most to higher energy bills in recent years.

However, the costs of energy and climate change policies also make up a proportion of domestic bills. The policies bring a number of benefits to consumers and the economy. For example, by increasing the proportion of renewable energy we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels and by improving the energy efficiency of homes we reduce consumption and household costs. Without government policies, average household energy bills would be higher.

Government is taking action to make these policies more affordable.

The Government Electricity Rebate (GER) is a £12 government contribution to help lower the impacts of these Government environmental and social policy costs on consumer energy bills.


8 comments:

Barman said...

Remarkably nice of the government!

I presume they shook the rebate out of their magic money tree...?

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. The Government taketh a lot and giveth back a little.

Lola said...

Oh for God's sake. They must think we're mugs.

Furor Teutonicus said...

XX Lola said...

Oh for God's sake. They must think we're mugs. XX

The average voter IS, and there IS an election coming up.

Lola said...

@FT. Possibly. But I really think more people are starting to wise up.

Lola said...

MW. Oh. Thanks for clearing that up for me. I shall stop worrying now. now, where are my Soma pills...?

Kj said...

The application is a bit daft, but the premise isn't necessarily all bad. If it's a per household credit, it's a crude type of CD to counteract the regressive way of taxing energy production.

Mark Wadsworth said...

L, don't. Stay angry.

Kj, fair point. That did occur to me later on. Still a shit way of doing it, if you want to redistribute, just hand out cash, let people spend it on what they like.

The point was it's £12 per household per year.

That's 6 pence (less than 1 NOK) per person per week in my household, or about 0.5% of our annual gas and electricty bill.

The administration costs as a % of £12 must be huge.