The manufacturers’ organisation EEF has called on Chancellor George Osborne to do more to tackle rising business energy bills.
In a report by Energy Live News, EEF’s Chief Executive Terry Scuoler said: “The Chancellor’s top priority must be action on business energy costs. These are rising faster than our competitors, squeezing margins, which will risk choking-off the investment recovery.
“With government policies on climate change set to add as much as 50% to the electricity prices paid by industry by 2020, it must act now to stop planned rises in energy taxes and set out a long-term commitment to compensate energy intensive industries.”
EEF said measures in the Energy Intensive Industry Package, which offset increased costs from decarbonisation policies, should be extended until 2020-2021.
It said energy intensive industries should be exempted from the costs of the Renewables Obligation and the Feed-in-Tariff as well. EEF also called on the Chancellor to freeze the Carbon Price Floor and begin cutting it down year-by-year, starting in 2016. It said a planned increase in the Climate Change Levy should be similarly be scrapped.
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