So, energy prices are set to increase by around a staggering 15% this year, which according to government data means that there will be roughly another 600,000 households pulled into fuel poverty. Add the general increase in commodity prices across the board and it's not looking pretty.
Central government has set its stall on encouraging greater energy efficiency in homes. Insulate your house, turn off appliances when not being used and just generally use less.
We've also been encouraged to switch suppliers and get better deals. Given that energy prices have more than doubled in the last decade, it's perhaps surprising that collectively we've not already given this more of a go.
Perhaps not surprising when you consider that Ofgem has found that as a group, UK consumers are both passive and risk-averse in the energy market. Even when confronted with rapidly rising costs we're not confident that there's a better deal out there, and even when we are, we're even less confident on doing anything about it.
So maybe the challenge with fuel payments is more about mitigating risk aversion - which is a sort of trust deficit - alongside orthodox lobbying for better energy efficiency.
With this in mind, NLGN advocated last week in its white paper 'Going Dutch: Local Government and Fuel Poverty' that local councils should help lead citizens to club together and let the council negotiate a lower energy price from providers through bulk purchasing. The inspiration came from a scheme in the Netherlands called Met de Stroom Mee which encouraged 10,000 people to sign up to allow a group to negotiate for cheaper energy using the bulk purchase principle to get a better deal. The scheme resulted in an approximate 20% saving for those who accepted the deal.
Whilst this scheme was facilitated by a voluntary organisation in the Netherlands, NLGN believes that local councils are well placed to take a lead on this in the UK. As the Ofgem evidence notes, UK consumers in the energy market are more risk-averse, so having a recognised and trusted facilitator will help to counter this.
We've expended huge resources on helping both vulnerable and non-vulnerable people with their energy payments. Whether this is through a direct payment, like the Winter Fuel Allowance, or home improvement payments, the state can no longer so readily throw money at the problem of rising fuel costs.
Thus the question for government is what can we do instead? With fuel costs likely to continue rising, meeting the costs of household energy will become one of the great challenges of the 21st century, so fighting it with outmoded 20th century solutions really won't cut it.