Energy bills likely to rise by 20% in next four years, says Britain’s biggest supplier

Octopus Energy’s Rachel Fletcher said the government needed to take radical action to address increasing ‘non-commodity costs’. Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Britain’s biggest energy supplier has told MPs that bills are on track to climb by a fifth in the next four years, even if wholesale markets plummet, because of the rising cost of government policies.

An executive at Octopus Energy said household energy bills were likely to rise by 20% unless the government took radical action to address the burden of increasing “non-commodity costs”, even in a scenario where wholesale electricity prices fell by half.