The UK has launched a program to help people without elastic income with fuel prices, the first governmental effort to address the disproportionate affect climate change has on the poor rather than the rich. The UK defines fuel poverty as a household spending ten percent or more of their monthly income on fuel.

The government estimates at least two million UK households in this situation, though NGOs put the number at twice that. People without elastic incomes have been financially challenged as the prices of all key index commodities (except clothing) have risen. 

The UK has come up with a couple different solutions they tacked onto appropriations legislation to help customers get some relief:

1. Increase social tariffs. Companies already stagger pricing such that less wealthy customers pay reduced rates for energy; this program is to expanded and continued.

2. Personal data will be shared with energy companies to help determine income based aid; data will be carefully monitored to prevent abuse.

3. Money set aside for energy efficiency measures will be redirected to help less wealthy customers gain energy independence. 

4. Government will increase awareness of aid programs; many who qualify do not know benefits are available.

5. The rate structure will be standardized such that paying via direct deposit is not monetarily advantageous. Giving lower rates to people who pay with direct deposit can be unfair to people who cannot guarantee regular income.

6. Oblige energy companies to assist customers in reducing energy demands.

Many feel that while the legislation is a positive step, it does yet go far enough. Friends of the Earth’s Ed Matthews told the BBC that "The only way to warm up our four million fuel-poor homes is to super-insulate them and help them produce their own energy.” Others in parliament feel that the current billions in government subsidies connected to the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (their cap and trade program) amounts to such a windfall that energy companies should just be mandated to redirect those funds on alleviating fuel poverty.

Utilities like those in the UK are now being asked to do something counter intuitive to successful business principles- assist their own customers in reducing consumption of their own product. Conservation and energy reduction puts energy companies out of business unless they switch over to renewable energy. In the US, this problem is being dealt with by employing new rate structures, profit models and ownership agreements.

Regardless of the drawbacks and institutional changes required, it has become clear that reworking energy pricing and taxation models is necessary. That the UK has named fuel poverty as a concept and is addressing it politically at all is a big step ahead of the US, who will hopefully catch up soon.

Read more at the BBC.