Clean switches are still not cheap switches

A lot was made of the supposed financial benefits of clean switches last week after the Swedish home store IKEA announced it would team up with the Big Clean Switch - a collective switch campaign aimed at saving punters money while switching them over to green energy suppliers.

 

IKEA claimed that people who joined the collective switch could burn £300 a year off their energy bills.

 

These impressive savings are achieved by giving Big Clean Switch the power of numbers when it enters negotiations with energy suppliers. The theory is that a supplier will be more willing to lower its prices, and thus its profit margins per-user, in return for a bigger pool of customers.

 

The green energy prices available to people who sign up for the IKEA-Big Clean Switch scheme will not be announced until 6th March, so it remains to be seen just how good a deal customers will be offered.

 

If the penny-saving pair can pull off their plan and negotiate long-term savings for households on green energy tariffs, this magazine will applaud the achievement. But we cannot tout cheaper tariffs as a ladder to the green energy market for Britain’s poorest families.

 

Big Clean Switch claims that renewable energy is not expensive. On its website, under the heading ‘Isn’t clean energy expensive?’, the campaign says: “Think about it – once you’ve built a wind turbine or a solar panel, nature does the rest!”

 

This statement is woefully blind to the biggest cost barrier to clean energy faced by many working and lower-middle class households: the price of solar panels.

 

The cheapest solar panel package offered by IKEA costs an astronomical £4,412 for regular customers and £3,750 if you are an “IKEA family member”.

 

Households skirting the breadline are those who most need clean energy tariffs that slash £300 a year off their existing bills, but if the cost of entry is around £4,000 those long-term savings will always be a pipe dream.