'£9.2bn to end fuel poverty'

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It will cost £9.2 billion to eliminate fuel poverty for all but the poorest households, the study by the Centre for Sustainable Energy and the Association for the Conservation of Energy found.

The figure covers identifying fuel-poor households and installing energy-efficiency measures, but does not include homes that are not currently in fuel poverty but will be if energy prices significantly increase.

The study looked at the cost of measures such as loft and cavity wall insulation, heating systems and renewable energy to help households control their energy bills. But even these were not enough to lift some households with very low incomes out of fuel poverty.

The study also found the measures were not being installed quickly enough to meet the Government's target of eradicating fuel poverty in vulnerable homes by 2010 and in all homes by 2016.

Ian Preston, from the Centre for Sustainable Energy, said: "This study clearly demonstrates that, on current levels of resources, neither the Government's own fuel poverty programme or the energy suppliers' own Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) schemes support the measures needed in sufficient volumes. We're not going far enough, or fast enough."

Pedro Guertler, from the Association for the Conservation of Energy, said: "If the Government is serious about meeting its targets, then it should ensure that these programmes are sufficiently resourced to step up the number of measures installed, and expand the list of measures available to include solid-wall insulation and renewable energy technologies such as solar hot water.

"Currently there are more than four million fuel-poor households in the UK suffering from the misery of cold, damp homes. Failure to provide the measures needed represents a major gap in Government policy."

Labour MP Alan Simpson, chairman of the Parliamentary Warm Homes Group, tabled a parliamentary early-day motion calling for a taskforce to ensure that the Government met its fuel poverty targets.

He said: "According to its own estimates, Government is not going to reach its target for ending fuel poverty in vulnerable households by 2010. We need an urgent rethink about meeting this target and the Task Force would be a way of putting us all back on track."