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Just to help interpret the story btw: The implication here is an increase to Warm Homes Discount at the Budget (not a massive intervention)... ... and then a commitment to explore a Rising Block Tariff later on (too late for this winter, when the crisis is).

John Healey is planning a major intervention to cut energy bills for poorer households in this month’s budget, after ministers became alarmed at forecasts that show bills rising by hundreds of pounds in January.

The chancellor is working on plans to spend more than £1bn to help energy consumers, the bulk of which is likely to go towards increasing the discount given to households on certain benefits.

Sources say final decisions have not been made, but Healey is set to rebuff a call from the energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh to spend billions more on removing levies from bills altogether.

Energy officials are working up more radical changes to bills, however, which could be implemented after the budget and would change how much companies could charge customers, rather than subsidising their bills.

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Whatever options HMT chooses, it must understand that the crisis could get very serious. That will inevitably require fiscal action in the short term, but it also requires a serious plan to get off gas. Without it, the UK economy will remain at the mercy of LNG tankers…

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Another option would be to go universal - fix household gas prices at their current level, but keep them there as prices fall. This would shield everyone from the worst effects this winter, but also recover revenue for HMT and improve the incentives to switch from gas to heat pumps…

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Beyond that, the gas price may well head towards 10p/kWh in January, close to the level it was capped at by Liz Truss in 2022. Targeted support, as proposed by HMT, will only go so far in offsetting that. It will leave out many households, and the government cannot target very effectively anyway…

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There are three things the Chancellor should prioritise in the Budget, all aimed to make electricity cheaper: 1. Removing the remaining electricity levies 2. Abolish the gas standing charge, moving it to unit rates 3. Forgive electricity debt www.nesta.org.uk/feature/ener...

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Chancellor plans major intervention to help poorer UK households with rising energy bills

It’s always risky reading too much into pre-Budget briefing wars, but this does not sound like an intervention that is well calibrated to deal with the energy crisis we face this winter. The key problem, as ever, is our over reliance on gas, and these measures would do little to change that

theguardian.com

Exclusive: Officials working on further radical changes that would change how much energy companies could charge customers

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Love it. Concept is good, my content needs work!

Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

“Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe” I’m sorry, but you can’t just say things were good before 1979 so we should simply go back. The world is different, growth is lower and going back is hard

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Going to start one of those “instead of diving in I will post a thing I like and subtweet” threads. I will be using those quotes when you discover technologies in Civ4. And subtweeting bad takes on energy/climate/other stuff. So imagine this thread being read out by Leonard Nimoy…

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Gavin Jackson @gavinjackson.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yes I've seen that one before too. The key thing anyway is that a big sophisticated successful economy consists of lots of small niches that will always look tiddly when compared to the whole.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Flood:Re already doesn’t cover new homes, does it? Nothing built since 2012 iirc?

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Ah good question - this is a stocks / flows thing. Scotland was the early leader in heat pumps by miles - so has a lot installed - but has fallen back on installations per year more recently. We think HES is likely to be a factor

Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Reposted by Andrew Sissons

New blog from me: devolving the Warm Homes Plan is good, but not the Boiler Upgrade Scheme! Energy Sec Miatta Fahnbulleh has announced that the £15bn Warm Homes Plan will be devolved. We think this is good - mayors are well placed to upgrade homes. BUT! www.nesta.org.uk/blog/devolvi...

Devolving the Warm Homes Plan to local government makes sense - but the Boiler Upgrade Scheme should stay

Three implications of devolving the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Oh so I *think* that isn't actually Octopus - it's a scheme where Octopus pass on leads to approved local installation companies.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Ohhhh thank you, we had missed that!

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

We think we should keep the BUS, but make it better at supporting locally delivered schemes - for example, by making it easier for local government and their partners to apply in bulk for neighbourhood schemes. It should be a low friction scheme for everyone! www.nesta.org.uk/blog/devolvi...

Devolving the Warm Homes Plan to local government makes sense - but the Boiler Upgrade Scheme should stay

Three implications of devolving the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

We have a comparison here, because Scotland has a separate subsidy scheme to the BUS, which is more friction-heavy. It seems to result in fewer installations, and some companies - including big ones like Octopus - don't do heat pumps in Scotland

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

3. Adding friction The BUS is a pretty effective scheme - it is simple and fairly low friction. Having different local subsidy schemes would likely add a lot of friction for customers and installers, and possibly dissuade some altogether

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

2. Uncertainty for the heating industry The heat pump industry currently relies on the BUS (until heat pumps scale up), and devolving it would mean a big risk of a gap in funding. We've already seen with the ECO scheme that means businesses going bust or leaving the sector. It is a real risk

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

1. Allocating funding The BUS is demand-led, so it goes wherever people want heat pumps. Heat pump demand is very hard to predict. If you break it down into small chunks for each area, some places will run out of money, and some will underspend. Better to let everyone draw it down as needed.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The Warm Homes Plan also includes the Boiler Upgrade Scheme - the subsidy for heat pumps. This is a pretty effective scheme, and devolving it would be very risky, for several reasons: 1. Very hard to allocate funding 2. Risk of a gap decimating the heat pump industry 3. Adding costly friction

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Devolving the Warm Homes Plan to local government makes sense - but the Boiler Upgrade Scheme should stay

Three implications of devolving the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“Electric light, the first reliable internal combustion engine and wireless transmission were all invented within three months of each other at the end of 1979”

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Simon Evans @drsimevans.carbonbrief.org · 30/09/2026

NEW ANALYSIS: Record wind and solar save UK from gas imports worth £5.9bn during Hormuz crisis 🌤️ wind/solar generation up 14% in 2026 to date 🏭 gas down ~10% 🚢 >100 LNG cargoes avoided

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Possibly - but it’s one to use carefully. The case for doing it with gas is unusually strong imo. Economists mostly hate this type of measure!

Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There are obviously downsides to any EPG-style cap on energy bills. But there are upsides too, and this is miles better than just doing a 2022-style subsidy

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Some risk, but BUS can only do relatively small numbers in the short term - can’t scale up installations that quickly. And tbh it’s more focused on heating oil than gas rn. Also the point of this policy is to help longer term heat pump uptake, by stabilising the price ratio.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

It’s just a subsidy. British Gas would be hedging to make the fix possible. UK govt would just be using its balance sheet

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Would just apply after the price cap, as the EPG did. Definitely a risk that gas prices spiral, but in that case the UK govt will have to pump money in anyway. Better to do it like this (capping CPI) rather than a normal fiscal stimulus

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

But given how difficult targeted support is, how much pain high gas bills will cause this winter, and how tight the government's fiscal position is in the face of this... a gas price fix might be the best option. www.nesta.org.uk/feature/ener...

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

- Keeping the incentives to electrify - which is the best long term way to tackle the gas crisis - stable over time There are some risks: - Reducing the price signal (although it is weak, and there are other ways to reduce demand) - Risk of govt dropping it when prices fall

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This might sound like a mad idea on the surface. But it has several benefits: - Enabling government to intervene in the short term while keeping it fiscally sustainable, as the cost is later earned back - Acting as an "automatic stabiliser" when the economy is weak (due to high gas prices)

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

That would look something like this: - Govt fixes household gas prices at today's level - If prices are higher, govt subsidises them - If prices are lower, they are taxed to keep them at the level NB - this would no longer work at the July level (7.3p/kWh). The fix would be at around 8p/kWh now.

Chart showing historic gas bills under the price cap since 2020, with a gas price stabiliser at 7.33p/kWh. When bills were high around 2022, govt would have subsidised bills. The rest of the time, it recovers tax from them

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Energy bills are now almost certain to rise sharply in January, and the conversation will inevitably turn to short term government bill support, as it did in 2022. One way the government could do this is to *fix* household gas bills for 3 or more years, as we proposed here (in option 1)...

Energy affordability options: introduce a gas price stabiliser

The case for introducing a gas price stabiliser.

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Guillaume Noblet @gnoblet.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026

How long does a barista work to afford a small cappucino in their own café? Another #TidyTuesday from a few weeks back (week 36) with a detailed walkthrough. Playing with sine and cosine, long time no see, yay! Code: gnoblet.codeberg.page/TidyTuesday/... #ggplot2 #rstats #dataviz

A crema-coloured spiral chart. Each coloured bean is a country, placed at the minutes a barista works to afford a small cappuccino: Australia at 10 minutes near the top of the outer rim, most of Europe and North America within the first half hour, and Pakistan at 4 hours 37 minutes near the centre. Bean colour shows region and bean size the number of cafés surveyed.

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

True! But politically, the party that did that now seems to regret it, so…

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Making electricity cheaper is good though!

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Me too! Two credible policies that get there imo: 1. Build more clean energy and batteries (this is what's already happening) 2. Nationalise / public control of gas power plants (good idea imo but would take quite a while)

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The link between electricity and gas prices has already begun to break - and the government can take some credit for that... www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

Chart showing gas bills rising by 88% and electricity bills by 68% between April and October 2022. And then gas rising by 33% and electricity by 9% between April and October 2026

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Oh that is very confusing (but very good to know as I have a boy who sometimes puts flowers in his mouth!)

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Saw some crocuses, was surprised and worried they thought it was spring already, found out that they are autumnal crocuses, felt happy

A field of autumnal crocuses, light pink flowers

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Andrew Sissons @acjsissons.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I didn’t take the complaint here to be about the inside of government - more about think tanks and politicians. Feels like a pretty clear shift there, certainly over the course of my career