The current energy price cap is £1,971 a year. Cornwall Insight has estimated that the energy price cap will rise to £4,266 in April 2023, then fall back to around £4,000 and maybe less as the year progresses. The energy companies have proposed freezing the energy price cap at the current value (The Deficit Tariff Scheme), to ensure no price increases for domestic consumers for the next two years. They estimate the deficit between the actual cost of energy and the “frozen” price of energy will be £50 billion. However, there are 29 million households in UK, and The Deficit Tariff Scheme will create a deficit of about £2,000 per household per year. If wholesale price stay high for the next two years (and there is no reason to expect that energy prices will come down in the near future), then that means a deficit of 29,000,000 x £2,000 x 2 = £116,000,000,000, (£116 billion). This will be paid back by the CONSUMERS over a period of ten years and that means an extra £400 per household per year for ten years = £4,000 per household.
This is the biggest con trick I have seen for a long time, certainly since Sunak paid UK wages with recently printed QE money. The Net Zero legislation requires the UK to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and that means waging war on fossil fuel energy companies, effectively putting them out of business. Why would fossil fuel energy companies increase supply? And without increased supply, energy prices remain high FOREVER. The Deficit Tariff Scheme therefore could transfer a lot more than £116 billion from the taxpayer to the energy companies. This is a BAILOUT over many years paid for by the UK taxpayer. It is a “universal assistance” scheme, which means that millionaires and billionaires get cheap energy while poor folk who can’t afford 29p a KWh struggle with their bills only to be then loaded with an extra £30 a month to pay the “deficit”. This “scheme” does NOTHING to help small businesses who have no energy price cap to protect them from the rapacious energy suppliers. The only way to solve this “crisis” is to increase benefits for the poor, lower taxes for the workers and give nowt to the likes of Prince Charles and Rishi Sunak, both millionaires who can easily afford to pay the bills to heat their swimming pools and multiple homes. Having said that, why not tax the millionaires and billionaires to create a Deficit Tariff Scheme to help small businesses in the UK? Now that, I could support.