By Nicholas Earl
Households face a sharp hike in energy bills next Spring, with forecasters now predicting the consumer price cap will spike to £5,600 per year amid sustained supply shortages in Europe.
This comes as UK gas and power prices this winter hit new record highs yesterday, with baseload contracts trading at £420 per megawatt hour and an astonishing £630 later this winter.
Wholesale prices have spiked again across Europe and America, amid safety shutdowns of French nuclear reactors, droughts across the continent, and the looming threat of Russia turning off the taps into Europe.
Based on Monday’s closing prices, Auxilione has hiked their forecasts to £4,722 in January and £5,601 in April.
The cap is currently set at £1,971 per year, which is already a record, and has caused financial difficulty to households across the country.
Winter power prices are roughly 12 times higher than average power prices over the past decade and six times higher than the price of Hinkley Point C nuclear plant, which is under construction in Somerset.
Reflecting the desperate scramble for supplies, a cargo of liquefied natural gas from Australia is set for Britain for the first time in at least six years, according to data from Kpler and Bloomberg.
Earlier this month, the National Grid’s electricity system operator predicted the UK would not suffer supply shortages this winter.
However, this was dependent on excess supplies being available from overseas via interconnectors with Belgium, Netherlands and France.
The Government has also been wargaming extreme worst case scenarios pricing in four days of blackouts over January – as first reported in The Telegraph.
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