At a minimum it avoids a real headache next April when bills predicted to jump because of higher investment costs

Plus some more immediate things they could turn to on energy.

In @ippr.org war on bills piece @carsjung.bsky.social and I also pointed to making markets work better, changing practices and behaviors - backing lots of hard work by the CMA. Budget doc points to vetinarary costs, ticket resales and ground rent.

Thankfully salary sacrifice schemes for EVs and bikes not touched after concerns (though the pensions contributions are going to be a challenge I think).

But to be clear they are getting less (£1.5b) than the total ECO raised (£6-7b). A new scheme could deliver more efficiently for sure, but the Warm Homes Plan money now stretched a bit further to help electrification in low-income households.

- Underline again. Real Household Disposable Income expected to be worse than before (slower wage growth). Keep fighting on prices to show you're working for people even if wages stagnate.

www.ippr.org/articles/a-w...

Making charging cheaper is good. Business rates relief on charge points will help - but I'd be asking the CMA now to monitor pass through to the consumer - very easy for developers to gobble that up.

Some caveats here 4.6 was what we were expecting the ratio to hit next year. Estimate this takes us to 4.1 / 4.3 given measures are coming in in April 2026.

Elsewhere - as expected and as we saw in NZ or Iceland and EV tax harms uptake. OBR suspect a net reduction of EVs bought of 310,000 by 2030 - would've been worse but measures to boost uptake help somewhat.

Most striking - cost of living measures mean a 0.4% reduction in inflation next year. That's big and people will feel it, but as Hugh Pill of the Monetary Policy Committee said last week it likely won't change interest rates because of the temporary impact.

This can't be it. There is more coming. Sizewell C RAB funding will double by 2030, the network compensation scheme will come onto bills soon. As @ippr.org said earlier - this cannot be a one and done on bills but a first act www.ippr.org/articles/a-w...

ECO is gone too. Agnostic - DESNZ will get funding for a new low-income scheme. ECO had struggled with rising search costs and poor implementation. Chance for something better and bill relief in the interim. But because its mostly on gas, slightly undoes the efforts on electricity from RO.

This will reduce the price of electricity, good for bills and will make the transition easier. But because of other levies (nuclear, correcting two decades of underinvestment in the grid), electricity will still be around 4x the cost of gas.