British Chancellor Alistair Darling is seeking to hold talks with energy regulator Ofgem to discuss last week's gas and electricity price rises by Npower as Britons are under pressure due to the energy price hike.
In a letter to Ofgem published Monday, Darling said he wanted to review the reasons behind the price rises and their implications.
Darling wrote in the letter, "I would be interested in receiving your assessment of gas and electricity supply and market conditions both in the UK (United Kingdom) and Europe and likely future trends. I would be particularly interested in your views on the relationship between wholesale price movements and feed-through to domestic retail prices."
On Jan. 4, Npower, Britain's fourth-largest energy supplier, increased its average gas prices by 17.2 percent and electricity by 12.7 percent, as the company blamed the price rises on soaring wholesale energy costs which it said have risen by 66 percent for electricity and 60 percent for gas since February last year.
Gas accounts for 40 percent of electricity production in Britain.
Npower's 4 million customers in the country will now pay their annual bills of more than 1,000 pounds (about 1,970 U.S. dollars) on average for the first time.
Consumers will face intense pressures over the next 12 months with gas and electricity bills almost doubling over five years, according to analysts here.
The analysts say that wholesale gas prices have risen on the back of the record cost of oil, and have been driven higher by the growing number of energy firms on the continent turning to the more liberalized British market for cheaper supplies.
According to Britain's Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes, rises of 40 percent in electricity prices and 61 percent in gas prices between 2003 and 2006 had pushed an extra 1.73 million households into "fuel poverty."
Overall 3 million households spend more than 10 percent of their income on electricity and gas -- the definition of fuel poverty, the Partnership, a group of 700 industry bodies, said.
Massive increases in energy prices have led to a surge in the number of people struggling to make ends meet, it said.
The Partnership blamed utility companies and the government for failing to tackle fuel poverty effectively. The government claimed to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016.
According to the Partnership's prediction, some 14 billion pounds would now have to be spent if the government was to reach its target of eradicating fuel poverty by the time.
However, Britain is Europe's worst energy waster, with bad habits such as leaving appliances on standby set to cost households 11 billion pounds by 2010, a recent study claimed. Leaving unnecessary items on standby is said to costs each household an average of 37 pounds a year.
Source:Xinhua
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