Energy Bills Discount Scheme

What is the Business Support?

• 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 EBRS was designed as a temporary six-month measure to protect non-domestic consumers from soaring energy costs, cutting the cost of power bills and providing them with the certainty they needed to plan through the acute crisis this winter.
• In light of this, the significant intervention was brought in to help keep people in jobs, prevent unnecessary insolvencies and afford breathing space for businesses to identify measures that protect themselves from high energy costs.
• The government has been clear that such levels of support were time-limited and intended as a bridge to allow businesses to adapt. The latest data shows wholesale gas prices have now fallen to levels just before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and have almost halved since the current scheme was announced.
• The new scheme therefore strikes a balance between supporting businesses over the next 12 months and limiting taxpayer’s exposure to volatile energy markets, with a cap set at £5.5 billion based on estimated volumes.
• The EBDS will run for 12 months from 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024

Eligibility for Energy Bills Discount Scheme

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

How it works

Applying the reduction

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.

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 to find out more?

To find out more click here.