It's an advisory ruling, but opens the door for more climate lawsuits.

And all started by a group of law students - Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change. 🥊

"Failure to take appropriate action [...], including through the production and consumption of fossil fuels, the granting of fossil fuel exploration licences or the provision of fossil fuel subsidies, “may constitute an international wrongful act which is attributable to that state”. "
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You can also play with this chart and see how moving levies to gas would affect different types of households.

public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...

(keeping in mind that under status quo, low-income households, and especially those who use electric heating, contribute disproportionately)

There are different ways to reduce levies on electricity. The last row here shows average changes in annual bill compared to today under our preferred solution:

Shifting levies from electricity to gas + moving ECO off gas bills + increasing fuel support

Overall our response to the fuel poverty consultation argues that:

1. Heat pumps needs to play a bigger role,
2. Rebalancing levies resolves the tension between net zero and affordability,
3. Schemes should move away from “worst first” and treat a lot more homes.
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/we-need...

Our take at @nestauk.bsky.social is that making electricity cheaper is necessary in making any fuel poverty strategy sustainable (ie. aligned with net zero).

Without cheap electricity, it is still difficult to fund heat pumps for gas-using low-income households and promise reliable savings.

Government recently consulted on a new fuel poverty strategy for England. Recognizing that what they're doing now isn't making much of a dent in the problem.

Asking questions like "How should we implement the sustainability principle".

The ratio of electricity to gas needs to drop to well below 3.5 and stay there, otherwise mass electrification won't happen because electricity won't be a good deal.
Chart from:
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/fixing-...

Electricity needs to get cheaper, but realistically, low gas prices will also threaten the transition to clean energy.
If we added levies to the price of gas, the wholesale component (currently 58%) would play a relatively smaller role. Cheap gas wouldn't affect the price ratio as much.

I'm afraid it'd have to scale up substantially. Levies paid per unit are currently calculated by estimating the total UK consumption in kWh and dividing the revenue needed by that. If the revenue was covered only from a portion of total consumption, levy rate would need to increase by quite a lot

So it would have the same negative effect on the average household while not delivering as big an incentive for larger households on gas to switch (because gas prices would remain the same)?
The good bonus is that it'd massively help fuel-poor households with direct electric heating.

Interesting, so what you're suggesting is the opposite of a rising block tariff. My first thoughts are that you'd have to increase the levy per kWh (maybe triple?) so much that it might disproportionately hit low-income households with low consumption.

Making electricity cheaper by shifting the unfair levies away from bills isn’t just good climate policy, it’s good value for money.

Full @nestauk.bsky.social blog here:

The @thecccuk.bsky.social advises ~440,000 heat pump installations in 2030. With a £6k grant for each, the government would pay £2.65bn.

With a £2k grant under levy rebalancing, it's just £880m. A difference of £1.8bn/year.

Not rebalancing levies could cost extra £13.8bn over the next parliament.

By 2030 without rebalancing levies, BUS would need to be at £6,000 to maintain price parity between heat pumps and boilers.

On the other hand, if levies are rebalanced, £2,000 should be enough for the average household.

(chart shows annualised costs over 15 years)

Moving the majority of levies from electricity to gas bills would bring the ratio of electricity to gas prices from 3.9 to 2.7. And it would technically cost the government nothing.

Heat pump owners would pay on avg. £380/year less than households on gas, even including upfront costs and interest.

The current £7,500 BUS brings the total cost of having a heat pump on average down to the level of a gas boiler.

But if homeowners could save hundreds of £ on energy, they wouldn't need such high subsidies on upfront costs.

Electricity needs to get cheaper relative to gas.