Govt Energy Efficiency Claims Don’t Stand Up To Scrutiny
By Paul Homewood
One of the UK Government’s defences, when faced with accusations that its climate policies are pushing up energy bills, is to claim that it is promoting lower energy use via various initiatives to insulate homes. These initiatives include the Energy Company Obligation, Green Deal and Building Regulations.
But how much difference are these activities actually making?
The best indicator is the use of natural gas by domestic users, which amounts to approximately triple the equivalent usage of electricity. (Most households, in my experience, tend to have gas central heating, and also cook with gas). To separate out the effect of non heating use, I have taken usage for Q1 and Q4, which is archived by DECC since 1998. (Please note, that this is done on a calendar year basis – so, for instance, the figure for 2013 is Jan to March 2013 + Oct to Dec 2013)
The results look like this:
The peak during 2010 is noticeable, which, of course, corresponds with the cold weather during both quarters, but there does not appear to be much else changing.
We can also plot gas consumption against mean temperatures during the same quarters.
There is some vague correlation between gas use and temperatures, as would be expected. The closest we get recently to 2013 temperature of 5.12C was in 2009 with 5.40C. Natural gas usage of 255 TWh in 2013 compares with 266 TWh in 2009, indicating a small saving of maybe 5%.
In terms of annual consumption, this would probably net down to about 3 to 4% (after non heating requirements during summer months, such as hot water and cooking, are taken into account). This is certainly well below DECC’s claims of 13%, ( for more detail on this, see here).
There is also the question of how much of the apparent reduction in consumption is due to people being forced to cut down on heating, because of higher prices.
As I have pointed out before, most people are not able to access these savings, as they are either not eligible for free insulation (effectively only available to those on income support, pension credit etc), not moving into new houses or not prepared to borrow money via the Green Deal.
It is plain then, that DECC claims about how much they are helping us to cut our energy bills are just so much hot air. Unfortunately, we cannot use it to heat our homes.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“Most households, in my experience, tend to have gas central heating, and also cook with gas.”
I think the tighter air-wise a place is (sealing cracks and better insulation) the less healthy such a house will be. Just a guess. Also, there is this:
My parents house – long time ago – used gas. Gas was found nearby. So much so that glass bottle factories located there; one in our town and one 8 miles west. This was in western Pennsylvania. Some rural folks had gas wells on the property and supplied their own fuel.
One of the consequences of using gas in-house is the residue. “Spring cleaning”, in our house, meant wash the windows (both sides) and rub the dirt off the inside surfaces. This was done with a soft cleaner called “Absorene.”
http://www.absorene.com/prodsumm/prod06.html
This has the consistency of bread dough, and that can be used also. You can’t keep that from year to year, however. Play-Doh was invented as a competitor to Absorene.
If house interiors are not cleaned occasionally of this residue (and whatever else accumulates thereon) the surfaces darken and colors (we had patterned wall paper) are no longer vibrant. There is a smell that comes with the aging. My great aunt (very old when we were little) did not clean the walls (gas lights in her house too) and my sister and I made an issue of the smell whenever we were told it was time to visit Great Aunt Lizzy.
Since buying our first house (1974), we have been 100% electric.
Obviously we are on North Sea gas over here, but before the 1980’s, we had to rely on town gas, produced as a by product from making coking coal.
I would guess that would not have been very clean!
John & Paul.
The stuff used ‘out-of-the-ground’ was/is Natural Gas ~90%-95% Methane / CH4.
The stuff we made in the UK before the discovery of North Sea Gas was Towns Gas, but that was the ‘prime’ product, coke being the valuable by-product.
Both (should) have been burnt in appliances flueing the products of combustion to outside. Cookers were & are flueless; a tiny number of domestic space heaters and small water heaters were flueless and potentially dangerous.
John, you’re correct that more-modern buildings have a higher standard of air-tightness. In addition, few modern homes have ‘open’ fireplaces. This can be counterproductive, because all homes need ventilation. Not for modern gas appliances which tend to be ‘room-sealed’, drawing all air for combustion from outside, but to provide fresh(-er) air for us occupants to breathe, help minimise condensation, and odour control.
In the UK, gas lights went out of favour at least 1/2 a century ago; but then that’s ‘cos ‘leccy lights were far superior and far less hassle.
Thanks Joe.
I always find it interesting how my own early experiences influence my thinking. Town gas is not in my experience. Natural gas was easily found. While coal was mined (mostly surface type) in my region (uncles and cousins worked coal; also some in the gas and oil side of things) most of the coal was shipped out for processing elsewhere. We were 80 miles north of Pittsburgh and coke was in much demand there. Earlier, historically our area had wood fired furnaces for producing “pig iron” with this one very near my mother’s family farm:
http://paironworks.rootsweb.ancestry.com/clahelen.html
More general and to the south of us:
http://www.oldindustry.org/iron.html
Reblogged this on Portlaw Against Turbines.
Hey, thanks for the website; I check yours about daily…
Gas use would be better if plotted against degree-days.
It was after WWII that we stopped wearing ‘fugs’, ‘long johns’, heavy woollen outer garments, overcoats and mittens even in the house. Typically only the family living room was heated, and that only when there were visitors, the kitchen was the preferred gathering place for the family and that was heated by the coal-fired range that also supplied hot water for the weekly baths.
Bedrooms were always cold, ill-fitting windows rattled in the slightest breeze and had to be secured with wooden wedges. Window glass was thin and fragile. No thought was given to making doors draught proof. Floor covering consisted of a square of thin carpet and a hearth rug. Wooden floor boards were often ill-fitted and emitted dusty air from the plenum.
Great store was laid in hot soup, tea and stone hot water bottles (pigs) accompanied by a hot bedtime drink. Public places were unheated. My local gas sales manager’s office had a very small (town) gas fire with a large sign “turn off the gas it’s expensive”. Paraffin stoves and flueless gas water heaters, illegal today, presented no hazard – ‘adventitious ventilation’ (draughts) quickly dispersed the ‘fumes’.
Slowly, after WWII, oil, gas and off-peak electricity, later fitted carpets, windows and doors became popular and eventually insulation replaced clothing and heat became all the rage – even streets were heated (malls). The use of energy for lighting became extravagant, even public buildings of little architectural merit were floodlit as were road junctions on trunk roads.
Many of us, born in the twenties, are still living and cluttering up the health and social services, thanks to the domestic heating revolution.
Instead of subsidising wind farms, insulation and the like, resources could be diverted to producing comfortable, fashionable but thermally efficient, clothing again and put some of the government’s propaganda behind that. If the present generation could learn to live like their grand parents did, there would be a lot less moaning and groaning about energy poverty and rising bills and there could be a thriving clothing industry.
Anyone noticed little time do eco-activists spend focusing on CO2 mitigation and evaluating it ?
– There nothing on their websites like “this is the graph of the progress of CO2 reduction and this is cost”. No instead they spend masses of time hyping up scare stories and spreading disinformation, whist putting vast effort into stopping any critical views being aired.