Ofgem price cap LIVE: Households facing higher bills | Personal Finance | Finance

Greg Jackson, CEO of Octopus Energy, has told the BBC the likely rise is bad news for many people as we head into winter.

Asked why a rise is likely, he said: “It’s really driven by the fact we’re still so dependent on the global gas market. Global gas wholesale prices are still three times higher than they were in 2020. That feeds through not only into our gas price, obviously, but because our electricity price is set by gas it puts up electricity costs too.”

Mr Jackson said prices are still “a long way below” where they were last winter, but there is a lot companies can do to help bill payers.

He added: “Fundamentally, the problem we’ve got is the underlying energy costs are too high. If we carried on building onshore wind turbines in the 2010s, bills last year would have been something like £150 lower than they were.

“What we need to do is make sure that now the Government have started to relax the planning restrictions we can start building cheap, British renewable energy. And then we need market reforms so people get the benefits of that because at the moment people aren’t seeing the benefits of renewables.”