Britain Announces New fuel Poverty improvement Strategy.

On March 3, 2015, the Department of Energy and Climate change (DECC) released a report entitled "reducing heating costs: the UK's fuel Poverty improvement Strategy" (Cutting the Cost of Keeping Warm: Fuel Poverty Strategyfor England), which aims to set ambitious legal targets for the government to address fuel poverty in the UK by improving energy efficiency. The report lists the challenges and actions to be taken over the next 15 years.

The vision of the new strategy is to reduce expenses and improve the comfort and well-being of low-income households living in the coldest houses, the guiding principles for achieving this goal are: (1) to address the most serious problem of fuel poverty; (2) to address fuel poverty with the most cost-effective policies; and (3) to pay attention to the vulnerability of fuel poor households in decision-making.

The core of the strategy is that the lowest energy efficiency of as many fuel-poor households as possible can reasonably reach level C by 2030.

The short-term goal is that the lowest energy efficiency of as many fuel poor households as possible can reach level E reasonably by 2020, and the lowest energy efficiency of as many fuel poor households as possible can reach level D by 2025.

The report lists challenges and ways to address fuel poverty:

(I) improve energy efficiency standards for fuel poor households.

The government is committed to: (1) when implementing the fuel poverty improvement strategy, low-carbon plan and other strategies, in addition to considering low-carbon targets and renewable energy targets, always consider the actions needed to achieve the fuel poverty improvement target; 2 release better information on the cost of program implementation to ensure that consumers can share the benefits of cost-effective implementation.

(3) focus on future energy-saving subsidies to ensure that the government can help the most needy and least affordable households; (4) work with partners to support the development and proliferation of financing mechanisms that help fuel poor households improve energy efficiency standards; and (5) monitor the implementation model of the fuel poverty improvement plan and determine the progress of implementation and the gap between implementation and expectations.

(II) develop partnerships to help fuel poor families.

The government is committed to: (1) implementing the possibility of participation of local partners; (2) considering which partners are most suitable for promoting the achievement of fuel poverty improvement goals at different stages; (3) further understanding the role of partners in the implementation of the strategy; (4) enhancing the capacity of partners through collaborative actions; and (5) improving the capacity of partners by providing guidance.

6 work with partners and relevant field experts to ensure that future implementation plans have a good evaluation basis from the very beginning; 7 consider linkages with other DECC programs to ensure communication, complementarity and integration among policies and plans; 8 ensure that fuel poverty is focused on the design of new programmes and the review process of previous programmes.

9 ensure that the design of the plan properly reflects the strategic principles for addressing fuel poverty; 10 develop programmes that are flexible and adaptable to different measures over time.

(3) to improve the energy efficiency indicators of fuel poor households.

The government promises: (1) to find opportunities to expand the use of matching data; (2) to use a large amount of information to build new and intelligent alternative indicators; (3) to build a data sharing system among participating departments to explore more flexible and simplified processes; and (4) to achieve more flexible data sharing to support the achievement of goals and reduce implementation costs.

5 participate in and support the development of tools to help partners identify, assess and recommend fuel poor users; 6 continue to present and share views on fuel poor users; 7 ensure the participation of end-users in the early stages of planning.

(IV) efforts should be made to enable fuel poor families living in mobile homes to have access to help.

The government is committed to: (1) to sum up past experiences and lessons to ensure that the plan can be implemented efficiently and effectively; (2) to find suitable ways to solve the fuel poverty of users who do not have access to natural gas; (3) to better understand the location and characteristics of poor users without access to natural gas fuel; and (4) to study the potential of using renewable energy for heating to alleviate fuel poverty.

5 strive to ensure that the specific factors of fuel poverty in households living in mobile homes are fully understood; 6 work to ensure that fuel poor living in mobile homes can benefit from fuel poverty improvement strategies; 7 seek innovative ways to overcome the challenges of providing support to fuel poor living in mobile homes.

(v) to promote access to help for low-income families.

The government is committed to: (1) taking into account the special needs of more vulnerable groups when developing energy efficiency measures and other support measures; (2) recognizing that vulnerable households may have more difficult access to fuel, there are multiple needs and need more structured support; and (3) learn from the institutions that implement the plan and use this experience to improve the design of national implementation mechanisms and support local plans.

Remove barriers to data sharing, promote the implementation of goals and promote more data sharing; 5 strive to identify and help others identify fuel poor users.

(VI) to address the financial burden of energy expenditure of low-income households.

The Government is committed to: (1) continue to consider the implementation of energy bill subsidies; (2) strive to coordinate future bill subsidy schemes and other government policies; (3) implement bill refund measures through automated methods; and (4) strive to ensure that the design of future bill refund plans will not be out of date.

(VII) ensure that fuel poor households benefit the most from a fairly functioning energy market.

The government is committed to: (1) to ensure that poor fuel households can understand and control their energy use; (2) to capitalize on the results of large energy-saving networks, consider how the most vulnerable and poor families can adopt face-to-face advice; 3 to ensure that the benefits of addressing fuel poverty take into account consumers and their energy conservation potential; 4 continue to take measures to improve competition in the energy market; 5 continue to take action to help consumers through reforms.

(6) properly respond to the conclusions of the Competition and Market Administration's survey of the energy market.

(VIII) promote and improve understanding of fuel poverty.

The government is committed to: 1 provide a list of available research areas for DECC or priority areas being promoted by the government; 2 share information in other areas; 3 continue