UK Energy Companies To Profit From Green Tax Cuts

The story so far: A few weeks back most of the big UK energy companies announced their latest, above inflation, fuel price increases.

To divert attention from their profiteering at a time when most Brits are feeling financially squeezed, they cunningly emphasised that a (small) part of the increase was down to 'green taxes'.

Pretty soon the newspapers were all over it and the government, desperate to cling onto their voter share, quickly announced they would be dropping the 'taxes' (Reducing the rise in the average household energy bill to 'just' £70. Big deal).

Then after talks with the energy companies, the government proudly announced that those companies had agreed to a price freeze until 2015 (election year by coincidence), er, if the wholesale gas price doesn't go up (it's being going up for the last decade).

So, basically, they've agreed that they won't put prices up next year if they can't actually justify it...

Anyway, as part of this agreement, the government said the energy firms could have 4 years instead of just 2 to reach their 'ECO' targets. ECO is a scheme that requires energy suppliers to seek out and subsidise home insulation for low-income households.

Think about that for a moment: Insulating the homes of the poor is a very good way of helping them cut their energy bills. But, for the convenience of those companies, tens of thousands of low-income households will be denied these savings for 2 or 3 more years.

How will the UK Energy Companies profit from all this? Simple. Every year a low income house goes uninsulated, it's paying bigger heating bills. Thus lining the pockets of the very companies who asked the government for a delay. Robbing the poor to pay the rich.

Lucky for the government, the poor aren't natural Conservative voters huh?