Government mulls energy saving campaign

The government is examining the rollout of a public information campaign to cut energy demand, the new climate minister has said.

Speaking yesterday at a fringe event at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, Graham Stuart said the government has done “quite a lot of work” on how to conduct a campaign to encourage members of the public to cut their use of gas and electricity.

But running such campaigns is “not straightforward”, he said: “It’s harder than you might think for the government to put messages to people in a way which they accept: we’re not necessarily seen as the best people to tell people how to do that.”

The government is examining how information about reducing demand could be tied in with the Energy Price Guarantee scheme, he said: “We’re looking at how you use (the scheme) as a way of sharing with people ways in which they can lower their costs.”

Referring to his departmental boss and secretary of state for business and energy Jacob Rees-Mogg, he said: “As Jacob rightly says to me, he’s not sure he and I are the best people to be telling people to put another jumper on. But finding ways of sending the right signals in a way that people will accept from the right interlocutors is really important because if people change their behaviour in fairly minor ways, but consistently, then you would save them a lot of money and you also reduce some of the demand side, which would be beneficial to the country.”

Stuart’s comments came as Conservatives voiced concerns about the government’s failure so far to mount an energy saving public information campaign at this week’s party conference.

Alexander Stafford, MP for Rother Vale, said the government has “failed” to talk to the public about energy demand reduction.

He called on ministers to mount a Covid-style campaign, including a letter to all households about the measures they could take, such as reducing boiler flow temperatures.

Stafford contrasted the UK’s performance with the “wonderful job” the French government is doing on its energy reduction campaign.

“The government has the ability to help businesses and individuals make those changes and not be scared about having a conversation,” he said, adding that lessons could be learnt from public acceptance that hosepipe bans are sometimes necessary because they realise water is a scarce resource.

But the Tory MP acknowledged the risks of scaring people into using less energy than they should, such as kidney patients who require lots of electricity to run dialysis machines.

Dame Claire Moriarty, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said the wrong people may be encouraged to reduce their energy usage, noting that its bureaux had been contacted by customers who had switched off their smart meters in order to save energy.

Benet Northcote, deputy chair of the Conservative Environment Network, told another fringe event that there is a “certain shyness” in government circles about mounting a demand reduction campaign.

Referring to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he said: “We are in a situation where an authoritarian, basically a fascist, is invading another country and holding the world to ransom on energy supplies and we’re being shy about sending people a text message saying you might think about turning your lights off.

“Compared to the kind of hardships in continental Europe that the poor souls in Ukraine are going through, this is nothing.”

Driving behaviour change on the path to net zero will be one of themes at the Utility Week Forum. Find out more here.