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A director of a charity has said government plans to shake up Britain’s power supply market are “regressive”. Norman Kerr of Energy Action Scotland: “It is a regressive step as payments to cover the costs will take the form of blanket levies on customers’ bills and will not be based on either ability to pay or level of usage.” He favours general taxation as a way of paying for energy reforms.

A survey by a price comparison website has found that one in five households believed their finances were at a ‘tipping point’ and rising fuel bills were the most important factor in squeezing their wallets. Moneysupermarket.com says that weekly outgoings for the average British adult have gone up by £54 over the past six months.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said more than 20 per cent of all households in the UK were affected by fuel poverty in 2009 due to higher fuel bills. A household is defined as being in fuel poverty when it has to spend more than 10% of its income keeping warm. DECC predicts that the numbers for 2010 and this year will have increased because of further rises in the price of energy.

The official energy price enforcer is warning consumers they face gas price increases of up to 30 per cent before winter. Ofgem issued the grave statement after it found out wholesale prices for gas next winter have already risen by almost a third. The increase could add more than £200 to the typical energy bill.

A minister has urged hard-hit energy customers to “vote with your feet” in the event of high fuel bills. The Bank of England has warned it expects household energy bills to rise by 15 per cent this year. “Consumers don’t have to take price increases lying down. If an energy company hits you with a price increase, you can hit them back where it hurts – by shopping around and voting with your feet,” Energy Secretary Chris Huhne told the Observer newspaper.

To support the construction industry, energy secretary Chris Huhne said that government policy will stop any ‘cowboy’ installers taking on jobs under the Green Deal, with registered tradespeople being given a quality mark to put customers’ minds at rest. The Energy Bill was introduced to Parliament last year and includes provision for a new Green Deal which the Government believes will revolutionise the energy efficiency of British properties.

The government has announced plans to install all 30 million homes in the UK with a smart meter within a decade. The process of the meters being fitted will start in 2014 and trials have shown that they can reduce bills by 5 to 10 per cent. These devices take electricity readings every half an hour, daily readings of your gas usage, and transmit all the data to your supplier.

About 25 per cent of households are predicted to turn off their heating at some point next winter in order to save money on rising heating bills, says a price comparison website. Uswitch stated that in January a survey of nearly 1,600 of its customers had indicated that 20% of them had turned their heating off regularly in order to save money. Furthermore, the group predicts that with fuel tariffs expected to rise, the number will be higher this year.

National Grid, which supplies the nation’s power, estimated that the country used far less energy watching the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton than it did during Prince Charles’s marriage to Diana Spencer in 1981. The Grid said less energy is used than on a typical May bank holiday as the nation is sat by television sets, instead of more energy-intensive activities like turning on washing machines, toasters and kettles.

High oil prices could stall the global economic recovery and “sow the seeds of their own destruction”. That is the view of the International Energy Agency (IEA) which says global oil demand this year is set to be lower than a previous forecast. Higher oil prices were among the cause of the body’s revision. “Persistently high prices at this stage of the economic cycle may ultimately sow the seeds of their own destruction,” the IEA said.

The cold spell over the winter led to a total rise in greenhouse gases in the UK in 2010. Figures releases by the Department of Energy and Climate Change showed carbon dioxide, which accounts for about 84 per cent of UK emissions, was up 3.8 per cent. Carbon dioxide emissions from homes, which relate only to heating and cooking with gas, rose by 13.4 per cent in 2010 due to shivering households turning up the heating.

A scheme has been reintroduced which can help households struggling to pay their energy bills. The Warm Front scheme has reopened for applications, and this provides heating and insulation home improvements for England’s poorest families and most inefficient homes. Among the heat-saving measures are loft and cavity wall insulation, and draught proofing. It is hoped that the scheme will help more than 90,000 households by offering heating upgrades worth up to £3,500.