Key events
Introduction: Households set to learn if energy bills will rise again from January
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Britain’s long-running cost of living squeeze may tighten this morning, when households across the country learn whether average energy bills will rise, or fall, in January.
Regulator Ofgem is due to announce how Britain’s price cap will change in January-March at 7am today, and analysts fear the cap will rise slightly.
The cap sets the maximum that suppliers can charge their 29 million household customers per unit of gas and electricity. It is calculated based on the wholesale price of energy, which are still above historic averages despite dropping back from the highs seen shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Importantly, the cap is on the unit price of energy – it’s not a limit on how large a bill could be.
It was originally introduced five years ago to protect consumers who did not shop around for their energy, but once prices rose it became the default tariff for providers and now most households pay prices at the level of the cap.
The current cap, which runs from October to December, works out at £1,717 per year for an average household’s dual-fuel bill.
On Monday, energy consultancy Cornwall Insight said it had calculated that the price cap will rise by 1% for January-March, to £1,736 a year. Cornwall have a good track record of getting this maths right – we’ll find out shortly if they’re correct this time…
Craig Lowrey, principal consultant at Cornwall Insight, said:
“Supply concerns have kept the market as volatile as earlier in the year and additional charges have remained relatively stable, so prices have stayed flat.
“While we may have seen this coming, the news that prices will not drop from the rises in the autumn will still be disappointing to many as we move into the colder months.”
The agenda
-
7am GMT: Energy regulator Ofgem to set price cap for January-March 2025
-
7am GMT: UK retail sales report for October
-
9am GMT: Eurozone ‘flash’ PMI report for November
-
9.30pm GMT: UK ‘flash’ PMI report for November
-
2.45pm GMT: US ‘flash’ PMI report for November
