Submitted by Bill Fernie
12th August 2026
For years, politicians and energy companies have told us that Britain needs to become more energy efficient.
It sounded like a sensible long-term environmental policy.
But something rather different is now happening.
Millions of households are learning to use less energy because they have discovered that they have to.
Petrol and diesel prices have risen sharply. Gas and electricity bills remain a significant burden. Food, mortgages, rents and other household costs are competing for the same money.
The result is a quiet change in behaviour.
People are driving less, combining journeys, turning the heating down, heating fewer rooms, switching appliances off and thinking twice before using energy-intensive equipment.
And perhaps most interestingly, many people are discovering something that governments have been telling us for years:
we were probably wasting more energy than we realised.
My own little energy experiment
I have been conducting my own rather unscientific experiment at home.
It began partly because energy prices became so difficult to ignore.
I live in a large house, and for many years heating oil was an important part of keeping it warm. In the past, even during summer, I would sometimes put the oil heating on for an hour or so when the evenings became chilly.
This year I haven't done that.
In fact, I haven't used the oil heating since March.
Obviously, summer weather helps. I am not claiming that I have discovered some revolutionary heating technology.
But I have also changed the way I use electricity.
Living alone makes some of this considerably easier. There is no argument over whether another room needs heating, whether the television should remain on, or whether someone wants to run an appliance at a particular time.
But the important thing is that many of the changes have been remarkably simple.
I have found ways of reducing electricity consumption without feeling that I am living in the dark or sitting in a cold house.
And the result has been striking.
My electricity consumption has fallen by almost half.
That is not a laboratory experiment and everyone's circumstances are different.
But it has demonstrated something important to me.
Reducing energy consumption doesn't necessarily require dramatic lifestyle changes.
Sometimes it simply requires paying attention.
Britain's motorists are discovering the same thing
There is now evidence that this is happening across the country.
When petrol and diesel prices surged, motorists initially did something quite understandable.
Some bought extra fuel because they expected prices to rise further.
Then behaviour changed.
People began conserving fuel.
Official statistics have shown reductions in fuel purchasing and indications that motorists have been changing their behaviour as prices increased.
For some people that means fewer unnecessary journeys.
For others it means combining several errands into one trip.
Some are driving more slowly, planning journeys more carefully or using public transport where that is practical.
And some simply aren't making journeys they would previously have taken for granted.
That matters because petrol and diesel are unusual household expenses.
If electricity becomes expensive, you can sometimes reduce consumption without changing where you go.
But if petrol becomes expensive, you can reduce the bill by going nowhere.
Heating is where the biggest battle may be fought
Heating is another area where households have learned to economise.
Turning a thermostat down by a degree or two may not sound significant.
But multiplied across millions of homes, relatively small changes can make a substantial difference.
People have also become more conscious of which rooms actually need heating.
Why heat every room in a four-bedroom house if only one or two are being used?
Why heat an empty house to the same temperature as one occupied all day?
Why leave heating on because that is what the household has always done?
These are simple questions.
But the energy crisis forced many people to start asking them.
And once people discover that they can reduce consumption without making their lives miserable, some of those changes tend to become permanent.
Electricity presents a different problem
There is, however, a limit to how far this can go.
You can turn lights off.
You can reduce standby consumption.
You can use appliances more efficiently.
You can wash clothes at lower temperatures.
You can avoid unnecessarily running an oven.
You can reduce the use of tumble dryers.
You do not need to overfill the kettle every time you want tea or coffee - don't run the tap into the kettle - fill one mug of water for each one needed. I was gobsmacked at the saving in one year.
You can become more careful about when you use electricity.
But eventually you reach the things you cannot easily eliminate.
The refrigerator still needs to run.
The freezer still needs electricity.
The washing machine still has to operate.
Computers, phones and communications equipment need charging.
And increasingly, the car may need electricity too.
This creates an interesting contradiction at the heart of Britain's energy transition.
We are being encouraged to replace petrol and diesel cars with electric vehicles.
We are being encouraged to replace gas boilers with heat pumps.
We are increasingly dependent on electricity for modern life.
So electricity demand could eventually increase even while people are becoming much more careful about how they use it.
The danger of assuming households have unlimited room to cut
This raises an important question.
What happens when there is nothing left to cut?
A household can reduce unnecessary consumption.
It can eliminate waste.
It can turn the thermostat down.
It can make fewer car journeys.
It can buy more efficient appliances.
But there is a point where further reductions stop being about efficiency and start becoming about living standards.
There is a big difference between turning off a light in an empty room and deciding whether you can afford to heat the room at all.
There is also a big difference between combining shopping trips and deciding whether you can afford to visit relatives who live 30 or 40 miles away.
That distinction is particularly important in rural Britain.
Rural households have fewer alternatives
For someone living in central London, reducing petrol consumption may be relatively straightforward.
There are buses, trains, Underground services, walking and cycling.
For many people in rural Scotland, the situation is completely different.
A car isn't necessarily a luxury.
It can be the only practical way to get to work, the supermarket, the doctor, the bank or a hospital.
That makes rising fuel prices much more painful.
The same applies to heating.
A household without access to mains gas has fewer options.
And replacing an existing heating system with something more efficient isn't necessarily cheap or simple.
The energy transition therefore looks very different depending on where someone lives.
We may be witnessing the beginning of "energy austerity"
There is no government programme called Energy Austerity.
But perhaps we should start using the term.
It describes something that is already happening quietly inside millions of homes.
People are making hundreds of small decisions every week:
Do I really need to make that journey?
Do I need the heating on?
Can I heat one room instead of three?
Does that appliance need to remain switched on?
Can I wait until tomorrow?
Can I combine these two journeys?
Can I use less hot water?
Can I buy something that uses less electricity?
Can I simply do without it?
Individually, these decisions look insignificant.
Collectively, they can change national energy consumption.
And there is another important consequence.
Once people discover that they can reduce their energy use, they may not return completely to their previous habits when prices eventually fall.
The energy crisis may therefore have changed consumer behaviour permanently.
But there is a limit
There is an uncomfortable question for policymakers.
How much of Britain's future energy strategy depends upon people consuming less?
And how much depends upon them consuming electricity instead of oil and gas?
Because those are two very different things.
Britain can become considerably more energy efficient.
But it cannot simply keep asking households to consume less indefinitely.
Eventually people reach the point where another reduction means a colder home, fewer journeys, fewer activities or a lower standard of living.
That is where energy policy becomes much more complicated.
The challenge isn't simply to persuade people to use less energy.
It is to make the energy they genuinely need affordable, reliable and increasingly clean.
My experiment has taught me something
My own experience has probably made me more conscious of energy than I was previously.
Some changes have involved a little planning.
Others have been almost ridiculously simple.
And that is perhaps the most encouraging part.
You don't necessarily have to make enormous sacrifices to reduce energy consumption.
You can start by eliminating waste.
But my experiment has also demonstrated the other side of the argument.
There is a finite amount that any household can save.
I can reduce my electricity consumption substantially because I live alone and have changed a number of habits.
A family with children cannot simply switch everything off.
A person who has to drive 40 miles to work cannot necessarily stop driving.
Someone who is already heating only the rooms they use cannot save much more without becoming uncomfortable.
And that brings us back to the question facing Britain.
We are learning to use less energy.
But what happens when there is nothing left to cut?
Because when that point arrives, the answer cannot simply be:
"Use less."
It has to be "Make the energy we need affordable."