Clear signs that wholesale energy prices are dropping will relieve businesses navigating the UK government’s new Energy Bills Discount Scheme (EBDS).
The current Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS) will be replaced with the EBDS discount scheme from 1 April 2023 for 12 months until 31 March 2024.
Positive takeaways from the new EBDS are:
› All businesses remain eligible.
› All contract types (fixed/flexible/variable/deemed) remain eligible.
› Discounts continue to apply for both gas and electricity.
However, the level of the discounts is reduced sharply to:
› A maximum of 19.61 £/MWh (1.961 p/kWh) for electricity, payable only if the applicable wholesale price exceeds 302 £/MWh (30.2 p/kWh).
› A maximum of 6.97 £/MWh (0.697 p/kWh) for gas, payable if the applicable wholesale price exceeds 107 £/MWh (10.7 p/kWh).
More significant discounts are offered to energy-intensive manufacturing businesses, libraries, museums, historical attractions, zoos, botanical gardens, and nature reserves.
A hit to your energy budgets?
As things currently stand, there will be no discount from April 2023 because wholesale prices commencing on this date are circa 20p/kWh for electricity and 6.7p/kWh for gas.
A further consideration is whether your business qualifies as energy intensive and, therefore, eligible for larger discounts. This is a pertinent sticking point for our data centre customers, who are surprisingly excluded from the UK government’s Energy and Trade Intensive Industries list despite being intensive energy users.
You can view the entire Energy and Trade Intensive Industries list here ›
If you’d like to discuss the new EBDS and what it means for your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch via our website’s contact form ›
