Lee Hyde, Director of Sustainability at SaveMoneyCutCarbon, the UK’s leading sustainability and money-saving platform, comments on how the Spring Budget affects UK households and the continued need for home-generated, clean, green, and affordable energy.
Click here to read HM Treasury’s 2023 Spring Budget.
Click here for a summary from the BBC.
Click here for more responses to the budget from the housebuilding industry.
“Since the three-month extension is set to go ahead and will retain the status quo until the end of June, based on current analysis of wholesale energy costs, Ofgem should be able to begin lowering the price cap to around £2,100 per year (for a typical household), which is below the government’s current guarantee. Essentially ensuring that households should not need to feel the impact of another price hike.
“Considering that we have seen wholesale energy costs drop compared to the peak we saw in winter, the overall cost of the support package is considerably less, providing full justification for the intervention.
“A £3 billion estimated cost to halt a 20% increase may seem an excessive sum of tax-payers money but considering that Citizens Advice projected this week that unless the government intervenes and retains the support under the Energy Price Guarantee, the number of households that would have struggled to pay their bills would have increased, from one in 10 to one in five, further fuelling the cost-of-living crisis. It feels to me this intervention was a necessity – not a luxury.
“However, it is still an uncomfortable situation for many households but at least the extension provides for consistency for those that have stabilised and budgeted to the current increase. Ofgem forecasts show we will see further reductions in the wholesale markets and as such people should expect, and demand that prices reduce in June.
“In the short term, I would urge anyone worried or struggling to reach out to your supplier as early as possible for support, many of the reputable providers have support mechanisms in place, in the medium to long term, we need system-wide changes.”
Following the announcement of nuclear energy investment as outlined in Hunt’s statement where increasing nuclear power is said to become a critical source of cheap and reliable energy. Lee Hyde comments:
“Resorting to nuclear is a lack of imagination – we need to invest in our under-developed energy infrastructure. As homes and businesses decarbonise, opting for solar, battery, heat pumps and EVs, there will be an increased demand for electricity. With DNO applications on the increase, we need to invest in infrastructure in order to accommodate the demand for renewable energy installations. This will be key in the race to net zero.
“The government and institutions responsible for investment in infrastructure and policy development need to prioritise this country’s energy security. We need home-generated, clean, green, and affordable energy.”
Commenting on ESG and staff retention guidance for small businesses in the UK, Hyde says: “Under the current economic climate and in combination with how we change our behaviours and the impacts that our businesses have on the nation’s environmental targets, employee benefit schemes need to focus on ESG, and organisations need to see this as a mutually beneficial symbiosis. Be it through carbon literacy which has been shown to embed employee behavioural change in the workplace producing tangible cost savings, typically between 8-15% or the ability to decentralise operations and significantly reduce overhead costs and ultimately operational carbon footprints.
“We are seeing a new generation of talent emerging making employment decisions based on ESG credentials. A recent study shows that come 2029, the Millennial and Gen Z generations will make up 72% of the world’s workforce, compared to 52% in 2019. This future workforce will continue to place greater emphasis on these global issues than any other generation and will demand more from employers on these issues and ultimately will make career decisions on these values over just simply a figure in a paycheck.”
In their recent national study, the sustainability superstore unveiled that green behaviour changes are already at the forefront of consumer minds having found that 66% of the nation agree that they will introduce eco-behaviours if it means that they save money.
