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Energy Bills Discount Scheme

Melanie Richardson

28/02/2023

The Energy Bill Relief Scheme currently provides a discount on wholesale gas and electricity prices for all non-domestic consumers. This includes public sector organisations, voluntary sector organisations like charities, and businesses. The scheme came into effect on 1 October 2022 and was always intended to run until 31 March 2023.

The new Energy Bills Discount Scheme will run from March 2023 to March 2024.

Here’s what you need to know.

Eligibility:

As with the original scheme, the new scheme will be available to everyone on a non-domestic contract including:

businesses
voluntary sector organisations, such as charities
public sector organisations such as schools, hospitals, and care homes

who are:

on existing fixed price contracts that were agreed on or after 1 December 2021
signing new fixed price contracts
on deemed / out of contract or standard variable tariffs
on flexible purchase or similar contracts
on variable ‘Day Ahead Index’ (DAI) tariffs (Northern Ireland scheme only)

How much can I save?

As per the current scheme the government will provide a discount on your gas and electricity unit prices. Eligible non-domestic consumers will now receive a per-unit discount to their energy bills during the 12-month period from April 2023 to March 2024, subject to a maximum discount. The relative discount will be applied if wholesale prices are above a certain price threshold. For most non-domestic energy users in Great Britain and Northern Ireland these maximum discounts have been set at:

electricity - £19.61 per megawatt hour (MWh) with a price threshold of £302 per MWh.
gas - £6.97 per MWh with a price threshold of £107 per MWh

How it works:

As with the original scheme, suppliers will automatically apply reductions to the bills of all eligible non-domestic customers.

Eligible ETII customers will have to apply for the higher level of support. Further details on how this will work will be published in due course. If you think your supplier is not applying the discount correctly, you should contact your supplier in the first instance.

The government will compensate suppliers for the reduction in wholesale gas and electricity unit prices that they are passing on to non-domestic customers.

The discount applied will be in pence per kilowatt hour (p/kWh). The p/kWh government support for comparable contracts will be the same across suppliers, but the absolute level of individual bills will continue to vary across different contracts and tariffs. For more information visit:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/energy-bills-discount-scheme

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