Using shared buying power to drive a harder bargain with energy companies can work.
The Big Switch bid to get cheaper gas and electricity prices for households has accepted Cooperative Energy’s offer. This was the best offer from the various energy companies and looks set to save more than 280,000 households taking part a total of £25 million – with, on average, each household saving £123 a year.
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Silly tariffs
We need a more sensible price structure for gas and electricity. At the moment, people in fuel poverty, and others who use small amounts of energy, pay high prices per unit of the energy they use, while people who use a lot of energy pay lower prices per unit of energy. This creates a perverse incentive to use more energy, since the price tariff is higher for low rates of energy use, and lower for higher rates of energy use. Daft or what?
Sensible tariffs
Apart from Cooperative Energy, which has a single tariff regardless of the amount of energy a customer uses, Ebico is the only UK energy company I know about that sells electricity and gas at the same rate per unit to all customers within a given region.