Labour’s biggest green donor has described a government push for “zero-bill homes” as a “silly concept” and called for poorer households to be singled out for support.
Dale Vince, the renewable energy magnate who has donated more than £6 million to the Labour Party, also said that plans to roll out cheap loans for households should be restricted to solar panels.
A warm homes fund to be announced in the coming weeks will set aside about £2 billion for households to buy subsidised solar panels, batteries and heat pumps.
• Dale Vince: ‘Money hasn’t changed me. It’s changed what I can do’
Ministers will work with banks and energy companies to allow homes to install the equipment with no upfront costs, which would instead be repaid in bills over five or ten years. The bill payers would still have cheaper power, even while paying off the loans.
Ministers believe that as a result, some homes could effectively become “zero-bill”, paying little or no money for power, while others would make significant savings.
Vince said the ambition was “achievable if you spend enough money”, but added: “If you spend £20,000 you’ll get almost no bills, but you’ve paid for that, you’ve basically paid nearly two decades of bills up front. It’s a silly concept.”
A source close to the plans said the framing of a zero-bill home was “a bit much”, adding: “While it is true that with batteries, solar and a heat pump, your bills will likely collapse, the vast majority of people will still have a small bill at the end of it.”
About a million people are expected to have bills cut as a result of the new loan scheme. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, promised at the general election that household energy bills would fall by £300 by the end of the parliament.
Claire Coutinho, the Conservative shadow energy secretary, said: “There are 29 million families who were promised that Labour would cut their bills by £300, but … this plan will benefit very few of those families.
“What’s worse is that Ed Miliband and his ministers are ignoring the core problem: that Britain has the highest electricity prices in the world and their plans to decarbonise at breakneck speed will send prices even higher whilst lining the pockets of wind developers.”
Reform UK said that Labour’s manifesto pledge to reduce energy bills lay “in tatters”, adding that the new proposal “drives the final nail into that broken promise”.
Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, said the move was part of Miliband’s “fanatical net-zero crusade” that would pile “even more pain on to households that have already been stung by energy bills soaring by hundreds of pounds”.
• Rise of the zero-bill home? Ed Miliband pins hopes on solar power
A Labour source responded that the government was “bringing down energy bills for families after the Conservatives left Britain exposed to markets controlled by dictators”.
The source added: “Our warm homes plan will continue to drive down costs for families so more people can upgrade their homes and cut their bills.”
But Vince said the loan scheme was wrong not to prioritise those who could not afford bills over middle-class families. “If I was doing it I would target public-sector housing first,” he said.
“It tends to be the least well-off among us that live in public-sector housing. These are the people that can least afford solar panels, probably.”
Miliband had initially planned earlier this year for all homes with heat pumps to receive discounts of £150 to £200 off their energy bills, paid for by the government. This was shelved after the Treasury changed its approach to green levies in the budget.
Vince said including heat pumps in the new scheme was a “big mistake”, as was a move to put a levy on gas bills to subsidise electricity. “It impacts the people that can least afford their bills, let alone dream of a heat pump”, Vince said.
He has previously estimated that up to 17 million homes in the UK could have solar panels installed on their roofs, and praised efforts to lift restrictions on “plug-in” solar panels that can be installed on balconies, patios or flat roofs and plugged into a power point by residents without the need for specialist support.
However, there have been concerns about the increased risk of fires from the appliances. Figures compiled by QBE, the insurer, show that fire services attended incidents involving solar panels almost every other day in 2024, a rise of 60 per cent within two years.
The company said this was likely to indicate “incorrect installation or maintenance”. The number of solar panels installed in Britain this year has reached a record level, largely thanks to new housing developments.
Almost 250,000 rooftop solar installations were carried out, meaning 1.6 million homes — about 1 in 20 households — now have the technology.
