The relentless squeeze on our finances will continue next month when a typical energy bill will soar by £221 to a whopping £1,862 a year.
This most unwelcome rise will push millions of homes even closer to breaking point. Calls for net zero to be delayed or scrapped are never far away, and former prime minister Sir Tony Blair joined those voices a couple of weeks ago. In his foreword to the Tony Blair Institute’s The Climate Paradox: Why We Need to Reset Action on Climate Change, he writes that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”.
But the truth is that, however bad the bill rises are, things would have been even worse if it weren’t for the miles of solar panels and wind turbines that have sprung up around the country in recent years. These are providing valuable – if insufficient – protection against gas prices sent soaring by the Iran war.
This means that UK gas bills will jump by 28 per cent on 1 July, when energy regulator Ofgem introduces its next three-monthly price cap.
By contrast, electricity bills will rise by a much lower rate of 6 per cent, according to an analysis by the charity Nesta.
