The UK household energy bills could jump by between 25% and 30% in the first quarter of 2027 amid surging natural gas prices as the Middle East crisis drags on, analysts say, warning that the government may have to spend more money on measures to ease the cost-of-living crisis.
Household energy bills will rise by 4% from October for the fourth quarter of this year.
But the jump for the first quarter of 2027 could be as high as 30%, according to a forecast by France’s EDF, one of the biggest energy providers in the UK, cited by the Independent.
Earlier this week, another forecast, from Bloomberg Economics, projected UK household energy bills to spike by 25% for the period January to March 2027, as international gas prices soar with the escalation of the Middle East conflict.
UK’s energy regulator Ofgem last month raised the energy price cap on household bills by 4% for October through December 2026, which means bills would be at a three-year high at the beginning of the winter.
The UK has a so-called Energy Price Cap in place, which protects households from excessively high bills by capping the price that energy utility providers can pass on to them. The price cap is a limit on what suppliers can charge domestic consumers per kilowatt hour of energy used.
The quarterly adjustment of this energy cap could see a sharp spike for the rest of this winter in January to March 2027, as gas prices continue to rally and global LNG supply remains reduced by Qatari and UAE cargoes not leaving the Strait of Hormuz.
EDF projects the regulator Ofgem to hike the energy price cap by 30% to £2,165 ($2,897) a year for a typical household for January-March, compared to £1,723, or $2,306, for October-December 2026.
Bloomberg Economics, for its part, expects the price cap to jump by about 25%, or by £427 ($571) to about £2,150 ($2,878) per UK household per year.
By Michael Kern for Oilprice.com
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