Heating bills - a fairer way?

[Brigadier]

Ok, so I know in my heart-of-hearts that the energy companies will find a way to screw as much money out of the customer, whatever the system adopted, but here goes....

From memory (having not looked at a gas bill for a good while now), how you are charged is structured along the lines of:

11p (say) for the first X Kwhs, then,
3p for every Kwh after that.

Which always seemed unfair to me - takes a lot of money to get your house up to a tolerable level, but proportionally much less to top it up to a sweat-box.

If gas was charged in exactly the reverse fashion, many more people could keep the frost off the inside of their windows, while the more affluent would have to pay proportionally much more to grow tomatoes in their spare rooms.

Could it work? Should it be tried?

 

[conny]

Seems feasible Brigadier.


And in all honesty I think most people would heat their homes that bit longer/higher if they thought it wouldn't cost as much, which would encourage those that cut back to do likewise and the end result could well be more happy customers and, overall, a bit more profit for the energy companies because they would be getting lots of 'little payers' instead of a few 'large payers'. If you see what I mean.

As an analogy; when I was an apprentice I used to repair washing machine motors on the side for a fiver each. One of the other apprentices used to charge a tenner. It always puzzled him why I got more money than him each month. Ok, i had to repair more than him but I had a steady stream of customers from recommendations whereas he got them sporadically.

Simple business economics.

 

[JohnD]

AFAIK it is usual now to have a standing charge, in the region of 20p per day, which covers your share of the infrastructure, pipes or cables, meter management, pruning trees by overhead lines, sending the bill, and other fixed costs

then a pence per kWh which is usually at a single rate to cover your usage.

The higher rate initial units were intended to cover both the cost of your usage, and the cost of the infrastucture.

There are a few people who whine that having to pay a standing charge means it is more expensive than they would like, to have an electricity supply to, say, an allotment shed to brew up a kettle once a week. Who they think is going to pay for their part of the network I don't know.

 

[JBR]

I think it could be simpler than that. I think it would be nice if we paid just for the energy we use.

By that I mean that we shouldn't have to pay through the nose for the power companies' vast profits and not forgetting, of course, the government's cut.

 

[JohnD]

VAT on energy is very low, at only 5%, but I think the trick of having subsidies for windmills and electric roofs paid for by all the other consumers, instead of from taxation, is turning out to be less popular than the politicians had expected.

 

[mehran]

energy companies will always what to keep the same profit or increase it.

all that would happen is the more people saved the faster the price rap up would be.

at the end of the day you would of done all the hard work of cutting back but get charged the same.

also what about industrial users of energy. they would simply move abroad and we would losses jobs.


best way is to try and keep energy cheap and carbon free.

 

[snico]

The government should step in and help companies and industry....doesn't Cameron want to grow manufacturing? all you hear now is companies closing because they cant afford the increases in energy and also carbon taxing, which most other countries don't even take part in. (carbon credits?...pointless)

The company I work for is cutting down production and staff because the current deal on gas prices is going up in 12 months by a huge amount, our company pays approx. £2m per month on energy, and has just been told they will also be charged £6m per year for carbon taxing......thanks Mr Cameron

 

[JohnD]

The government should step in and help companies and industry

meaning
The taxpayer should step in and help companies and industry

 

[snico]

The government should step in and help companies and industry

meaning
The taxpayer should step in and help companies and industry

Taxpayers, foreign investment, who ever they decide to get the money off. Or they could just stop all this carbon taxing rubbish!!!!

 

[JBR]

The government should step in and help companies and industry....doesn't Cameron want to grow manufacturing? all you hear now is companies closing because they cant afford the increases in energy and also carbon taxing, which most other countries don't even take part in. (carbon credits?...pointless)

The company I work for is cutting down production and staff because the current deal on gas prices is going up in 12 months by a huge amount, our company pays approx. £2m per month on energy, and has just been told they will also be charged £6m per year for carbon taxing......thanks Mr Cameron

'Green taxes': what do they hope to achieve? I assume they are doing this both to appease the 'greenies' and to demonstrate to certain other countries 'how good we are'.

Meanwhile, China (just to take one example) takes no notice of our 'holier than thou' attitude and produces more carbon emissions than us by far. Do our comparatively tiny emissions make much difference in the great scheme of things, other than making us all suffer - especially the elderly and poor?

 

[tony1851]

best way is to try and keep energy cheap and carbon free.

Impossible. The cheapest way to produce power is via coal, oil or gas burning.
Or it would be if the government did not put artificially high prices on fossil fuels.

 

[tony1851]

The government should step in and help companies and industry

meaning
The taxpayer should step in and help companies and industry

As per Snico, the goverment should step in and stop taxing energy for industrial users.
Many high-energy industries (steel, chemicals, glass, brick, cement etc) will close unless this government stops punishing them with high energy costs.[/b]

 

[JohnD]

Hooray for the taxpayer and his generosity.

Do you find that voters like to elect goverments that promise to tax them heavily?

 

[tony1851]

Hooray for the taxpayer and his generosity.

Do you find that voters like to elect goverments that promise to tax them heavily?

Whether the additional cost of green levies is borne by the taxpayer or the power user is irrelevant - there should not be any levies anyway. As above, the Chinese are turning out far more CO2 than we are saving.
Our government's stance on this issue is mind boggling.

 

[anobium]

Read a good suggestion in my local rag the other day.
Scrap the current BBC licence fee and tell them to fund the service via advertising like all the other channels.
Every household is then £145 better off, which could go towards their heating costs, and the BBC would then have to get rid of the overpaid prats such as Hislop and his mate Merson on "have I got news for you" plus that gang on "watchdog"
I have no doubt you could think of many others.
What is it the BBC get each year, £4 billion, no wonder they can afford to pay such ridiculous salaries, it doesn't matter when its handed to you on a plate. Easy come easy go.
Most of them wouldn't last 5 mins in the real world.