24th August 2026
There is a question that deserves rather more attention after the extraordinary rise in heating-oil prices earlier this year.
Are households using less oil because their homes have become more energy efficient, or are they simply using less because they cannot afford to use as much?
For anyone who heats their home with oil, the difference is important.
I know from my own experience that the answer can be uncomfortable. Since the price of heating oil rose so sharply, I have drastically reduced the amount of oil I use. That does not mean my house suddenly became more efficient. It means I have changed the way I heat it.
And I suspect I am far from alone.
A price shock that changed behaviour
The scale of this year's heating-oil shock was extraordinary.
The Competition and Markets Authority found that the average price of domestic heating oil increased by 64% between February and March 2026, rising from around 64p to 104p per litre. It subsequently reached about 123p in April — 92% above the February level.
For a household ordering 500 litres, the CMA calculated that the typical cost increased by around £200 in just one month, from approximately £320 to £520.
That is not a small adjustment to the household budget.
It is the sort of increase that can change behaviour.
People start thinking about whether they really need to heat every room. They turn the thermostat down. They shorten heating periods. They use a smaller electric heater in the room they occupy. They put on another jumper.
And, perhaps most importantly, they delay ordering another tank of oil for as long as they possibly can.
There are 142,000 oil-heated homes in Scotland
This is not a marginal issue.
The Scottish Government's 2024 Scottish House Condition Survey estimates that around 142,000 Scottish households use oil as their primary heating fuel — about 6% of all Scottish households.
And oil heating is particularly associated with rural Scotland.
That makes this a particularly important issue for communities such as Caithness, where access to the gas grid is limited and oil heating has historically been an important part of domestic life.
The CMA describes heating oil as essential for many households, particularly those in rural and off-grid communities. It estimates that around 1.5 million UK households depend on kerosene for heating and hot water.
So when the price changes dramatically, there is little opportunity for many households simply to switch to gas.
We know people change their behaviour when prices change
There is evidence that this isn't just anecdotal.
The CMA's investigation into the heating-oil market was prompted partly by the extraordinary price increases this year, and the organisation has now recommended stronger consumer protections for heating-oil customers.
But there is a curious gap in the statistics.
We can measure how much heating oil costs.
We can estimate how many households use it.
We can measure the number of households experiencing fuel poverty.
What is much harder to find is a simple answer to the question:
How much less heating oil are households actually using because of the price?
That is an important distinction.
A falling oil bill isn't necessarily good news
Suppose a household used 2,000 litres of heating oil a year and subsequently used only 1,200 litres.
At first glance, that could look like progress.
Perhaps the house has been insulated. Perhaps the boiler has been replaced. Perhaps the household has become more energy efficient.
But there is another possibility.
Perhaps the occupants are simply keeping the heating off.
That distinction matters enormously.
The Scottish House Condition Survey found that even before this year's price shock, 11% of Scottish households reported that their homes were difficult to heat because they could not afford to heat them. Nineteen per cent said their heating kept them warm only sometimes and another 6% said it never kept them warm.
Among households experiencing fuel poverty, the figures were considerably worse.
So we shouldn't automatically interpret falling household energy consumption as an environmental success.
Sometimes people consume less energy because they are making their homes colder.
There is a particularly interesting question for rural Scotland
The Scottish Government knows roughly how many homes depend upon oil.
It knows where those homes are.
It knows the energy efficiency of many of them.
It measures fuel poverty.
The CMA has now investigated the heating-oil market and documented the extraordinary price movements.
What we need is for somebody to join those pieces of information together.
How many households reduced their oil consumption in 2026?
By how much?
How many delayed filling their tanks?
How many switched part of their heating to electricity?
How many reduced the number of rooms they heated?
And, perhaps most importantly, how many were doing this because they wanted to save energy and how many were doing it because they simply could not afford the oil?
Those are very different stories.
The danger of measuring the wrong thing
There is a temptation whenever energy consumption falls to celebrate it as greater efficiency.
But policymakers need to be careful.
A family installing insulation and reducing its oil consumption from 2,000 litres to 1,400 litres has achieved something very different from a family reducing consumption from 2,000 litres to 1,400 litres because it can only afford to heat the living room.
The first is an energy-efficiency success.
The second is potentially a fuel-poverty problem.
And the statistics may look identical.
That is why I think the Government should be asking more questions about what lies behind changes in consumption.
The rural disadvantage
There is another reason this deserves attention in places such as Caithness.
The transition away from fossil-fuel heating is often discussed as though every household has a range of straightforward alternatives.
That isn't necessarily the reality in rural Scotland.
Installing a heat pump can involve a substantial upfront cost and may require improvements to insulation and changes to the heating system. Electricity prices also matter.
For someone living in an older, detached, rural house, the choice is not necessarily between an old oil boiler and an inexpensive modern alternative.
Sometimes it is between paying a very high oil bill and finding other ways of keeping warm.
That is a very different policy problem.
We need to know what is really happening
The CMA has done something important by examining the heating-oil market and recommending stronger protections for the roughly 1.5 million UK households that depend on heating oil.
But the next question should be about consumption.
If households have dramatically reduced the amount of oil they use in response to the price shock, the Government should know whether that represents improved efficiency or reduced heating.
That information would tell us much more about the real impact of the crisis than the price per litre alone.
Because behind every heating-oil statistic there is a household.
And when the price of heating a home nearly doubles, people don't necessarily stop needing warmth.
They simply find ways of using less of it.
Perhaps the most revealing statistic of all would therefore be not how much heating oil households are buying, but how much heating they have stopped using to avoid buying it.
CMA heating oil market study
Scottish House Condition Survey 2024