E.ON UK Sets Out Three-Point Budget Plan To Cut Energy Bills

E.ON UK has today set out a three-point plan to help bring down energy bills and give households and businesses greater control over their energy costs. 

The plan comes ahead of the Budget on 28 October, as millions of households continue to struggle with high energy costs and the January Energy Price Cap is forecast to rise above £2,000 a year for a typical household.¹ 

E.ON is calling on the Government to provide immediate support for struggling households this Winter, accelerate delivery of the Warm Homes Plan and take further action to cut the cost of electricity by reshaping bills and encouraging electrification. Together, these measures would help ease pressure on domestic and business customers today, while creating a more affordable and secure energy system for the future. 

1. Deliver support to the people who need it most

The Budget should provide immediate, targeted help for those who need it most. That means introducing the Energy Price Protection Payment from January 2027 to give people much-needed breathing space, alongside a reformed and better-targeted debt relief scheme. 

Energy debt already stands at around £5.5 billion and is forecast to reach £7 billion² by the end of the year, with the cost ultimately feeding back into customers’ bills. Debt relief should be simple to access, use better data to identify genuine financial difficulty and reflect individual circumstances, while helping identify problems earlier and prevent customers from falling further behind. 

2. Protect and accelerate the Warm Homes Plan

Protect the £15 billion committed through the Warm Homes Plan and accelerate its delivery, getting insulation, heat pumps, solar and home batteries into more homes. Doing so can lower energy costs for the long term and make these solutions accessible to people who might otherwise struggle with the upfront cost. 

E.ON has already demonstrated what this can deliver. Households in Coventry achieved average savings of more than £250 a year through fully funded home batteries combined with a time-of-use tariff³. E.ON is now investing a further £4 million to take home battery deployment to greater scale, starting with an initial fleet of 1,000 across the UK. 

3. Reshape bills to cut the cost of electricity 

The UK needs a clear plan to make electricity more affordable for households and businesses. That means shifting policy costs into general taxation, moving faster to tackle the link between wholesale gas and electricity prices, creating the right conditions for electrification and flexibility, and keeping VAT off electricity bills beyond April 2027. 

Giving customers more control over how and when they use energy can help lower bills while reducing pressure on the electricity network and providing greater energy security. With the right market conditions, E.ON modelling suggests greater consumer flexibility could deliver around £150 million a year in direct bill savings across 615,000 households, while helping network operators reduce billions of pounds in planned reinforcement costs⁴.

Chris Norbury, CEO of E.ON UK, said: “Energy bills remain too high and bringing them down for households and businesses must be a priority. Short-term support can give people much-needed breathing space, particularly those facing the greatest financial pressure, but it must go hand in hand with action on energy debt and longer-term changes that make energy more affordable. 

“That means staying the course on the Warm Homes Plan, tackling the costs built into electricity bills and giving more people access to solutions such as batteries, solar and flexible tariffs that put them in greater control of their energy.  

“That's how we can make new energy work and ensure no one is left behind.” 

The plan comes as E.ON Next becomes one of the first energy suppliers to start providing this Winter’s £150 Warm Home Discount, with payments already being applied automatically to eligible customers so they can benefit as early as possible. Last Winter, E.ON Next distributed more than £140 million of support through the overall scheme, helping more than 800,000 customers.