Household energy use in Britain: a distributional analysis

Published on 1 November 2013

In this report, we show the effects of energy price rises over the recent past, look at what current policies mean for effective carbon prices and their impact on bills, and consider the distributional consequences of a more consistent approach to carbon pricing, alongside possible changes to the tax and benefit system that could mitigate these effects.

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Government wants both to reduce carbon emissions and to reduce ‘fuel poverty’. Energy prices have risen in part because of a multitude of policies aimed at reducing emissions. There are also multiple policies aimed at ameliorating these effects. Altogether, this leads to a complex policy landscape, inefficient pricing and opaque distributional effects.

In this report, we show the effects of energy price rises over the recent past, look at what current policies mean for effective carbon prices and their impact on bills, and consider the distributional consequences of a more consistent approach to carbon pricing, alongside possible changes to the tax and benefit system that could mitigate these effects.

    Authors

    Person graphic

    Andrew Leicester

    Paul Johnson
    Paul Johnson

    Director

    Paul has been the Director of the IFS since 2011. He is also currently visiting professor in the Department of Economics at University College London.

    Arun Advani
    Arun Advani

    Research Fellow University of Warwick

    Arun is a Research Fellow at IFS, an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and a Commissioner at the Wealth Tax Commission.

    George Stoye
    George Stoye

    Deputy Director

    George is a Deputy Director and leads IFS work on healthcare.

    Report details

    DOI
    10.1920/re.ifs.2013.0085
    ISBN
    978-1-909463-24-0
    Publisher
    IFS

    Suggested citation

    Advani, A et al. (2013). Household energy use in Britain: a distributional analysis . London: IFS. Available at: https://ifs.org.uk/publications/household-energy-use-britain-distributional-analysis (accessed: 26 March 2025).

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