Heat off to help out

Back in May, Utility Week published our inaugural UK Utilities Risk Report, which showed uncertainty about the direction of policy as one of the top concerns for sector leaders.

This was back in the relative stability of Boris Johnson’s reign, where we only had to concern ourselves with the occasional u-turn. In our current climate, where the government has progressed to doing perpetual doughnuts around the car park of public policy, how can anyone actually plan for the future?

Even the cliché about the length of  a week in politics has been turbocharged by the Truss administration, whose climate minster said on Tuesday that he was looking at how to use the Energy Price Guarantee to share with people ways in which they can lower their energy consumption – and therefore costs – this winter. The same minister – Graham Stuart – was quoted just 48 hours later as saying there is “not enormous use in telling people to use less energy”, apparently at the behest of the prime minister, who does not like the idea of being too interventionist.

This jaw-slackening approach comes hot on the heels of National Grid Electricity System Operator (ESO)’s Winter Outlook, which spoke of the importance of demand reduction in mitigating supply pressures. As part of its demand flexibility service it expects to procure 2GW. It is understood the ESO sees this a long-term play and that the actual capacity of the scheme could be even bigger than the target outlined.

Not only is demand reduction, along with energy efficiency, the most direct and dynamic way of reducing bills, it directly contributes to decarbonisation and helps with security of supply. It is quite literally a solution to the energy trilemma. Why a government would explicitly refuse to give people advice on how to do this is utterly incomprehensible.

Stuart did admit in his earlier comments that perhaps ministers are not the right figures “to be telling people to put another jumper on”. But who is then? Energy retailers have the scope and the authority to do it. But will customers, beyond the early adopters, actually listen?

Both Ovo and Octopus have this week launched their own schemes to reward their customers for cutting demand at peak time – the latter as part of the ESO scheme. If nothing else it is good to see retailers competing once again – something Scottish Power’s Keith Anderson suggested the Energy Price Guarantee had temporarily eroded from the market.

Perhaps I’m being condescending in assuming that customers need either encouragement or education when it comes to cutting demand. Parents all over the country who have spent every September and October walking around the house turning off radiators and tutting have finally been proven right.

Given that it is ultimately the public who will foot the bill for capping energy prices over the next two years, will we become more possessive over it as a nation? In the same way that have-a-word heroes emerged as littering became a social faux pas, will it now become common for shoppers, diners or pub-goers to demand the windows are closed or heating turned off if they sense profligacy?

If so, maybe a Heat Off to Help Out scheme was never actually needed in the first place.

Wouldn’t hurt though, would it?

Engaging the public on the energy transition will be one of the key themes at the Utility Week Forum on 8-9 November. Find out more here.