In the long list of budget submissions from the business world, here\u2019s one the chancellor is probably disinclined to smile upon.<\/p>\n
Make UK, the body representing manufacturers, would like the government to expand its energy support scheme \u2013 the one unveiled in June as part of the shiny new industrial strategy<\/a> \u2013 from 7,000 firms to 115,000 businesses. And it would like the promised savings in electricity bills to be backdated to April this year; as scheduled, the so-called British industrial competitiveness scheme, or BICS, is due to arrive only in April 2027.<\/p>\n One doubts Rachel Reeves will go there for three reasons. First, these things never get backdated. Second, broadening the scheme would obviously cost more and the government has pledged that other bill payers will not foot the bill \u2013 funding is instead supposed to come from \u201cbearing down\u201d on levies and costs in the energy system. Third, widening the scheme would run against the deliberate focus in the industrial strategy on just eight \u201cpriority\u201d sectors, which include a few manufacturing industries (such as advanced manufacturing, life sciences and defence) but excludes many more.<\/p>\n Yet the spirit of Make UK\u2019s call for the government to get a move on \u2013 and recognise that the energy crisis for industry is happening now \u2013 is spot-on.<\/p>\n The damning statistic that the UK has some of the most expensive industrial energy prices in the developed world is familiar. It is repeated with every act of deindustrialisation in the UK, from the Port Talbot steelworks<\/a> to the Grangemouth oil refinery<\/a> to this week\u2019s news of the planned closure<\/a> of ExxonMobil\u2019s 40-year-old ethylene plant near Cowdenbeath in Fife. Those tales usually involve complicating factors (Exxon seems to be engaged in a pan-European restructuring, for example) but a common theme, alongside rising carbon levies, is the sky-high cost of energy.<\/p>\n Yet it is only in the next few days that Peter Kyle, the business secretary, will announce the formal consultation of how the BICS scheme will be implemented \u2013 meaning how it could be funded, who will be eligible and what the promise of savings in electricity bills of \u201cup to\u201d 25% will mean. Five months to get from a detail-free announcement<\/a> about \u201cslashing\u201d electricity bills for \u201cthousands of businesses\u201d to a consultation is far too long.<\/p>\n The big development in the meantime is that industrial companies, like non-industrial ones, can see what\u2019s coming next April in their electricity bills. The answer for some is hefty increases as higher transmission charges start to kick in to fund the five-year, \u00a380bn upgrade of the electricity grid<\/a>, plus a bit on top to finance new nuclear capacity. Heavy users could face annual increases of \u00a3500,000, reckons Make UK.<\/p>\n To be fair to the government, about 500 firms in the most energy-intensive industries \u2013 think steel, chemicals, glass and paper \u2013 will be shielded under the separate and established \u201csupercharger\u201d scheme. Their discount on network charges is being increased from 60% to 90%, so their bills should fall. But that still leaves a lot of companies who are heavy energy users \u2013 just not the \u201cmost intense\u201d \u2013 in the eye of the storm.<\/p>\n In these circumstances, another of Make UK\u2019s requests feels entirely reasonable: if backdating BICS is a non-starter, then fast-track the scheme to happen in April to coincide with the first blast of network-related costs. Waiting until 2027 is too late.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Back in the summer, the government was full of high-minded ambition about \u201cpowering Britain\u201d, cutting electricity prices by up to \u00a340 a megawatt hour for the 7,000 firms to \u201cmove us from being an outlier to right in the middle of the pack\u201d. Kyle is due to speak at the Confederation of British Industry next week. Aside from explaining what the \u201cup to\u201d will mean in practice, he should say whether the scheme can be implemented sooner than 15 months from now.<\/p>\n \u201cThe clock is ticking on tackling our eye-watering energy costs and it is now a case of political will rather than any technical constraints to addressing these,\u201d says Make UK\u2019s boss, Stephen Phipson. Fair comment. The government\u2019s scheme, as it stands, is limited \u2013 but it should not take half a parliament to get it up and running. Get a move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the long list of budget submissions from the business world, here\u2019s one the chancellor is probably disinclined…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-274225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}