Chapter Summary

Changing routine behaviour is the quickest way of beginning to address the challenges we face in improving our use of energy. Substantial savings can be made by providing much better information and support to help people manage their energy use. To make the biggest savings, though, we also need to move beyond relatively inexpensive and easy energy efficiency measures to more radical ways of saving energy. By making these changes, we could save between a third and a half of all the energy used in our homes. This is a huge opportunity, but also a challenge. It will depend on a step change in how we all think about how we use energy, and services to make the 'whole-house' approach far more widely available.

There is already support to help people to save energy and reduce emissions, through, for example, the Energy Saving Trust, the Act on CO₂ advice line, and their devolved equivalents, and from energy suppliers. However, there is more that the Government can do to ensure that people have the advice and tools they need. For example, we should consider how we can make more effective use of non- governmental channels to help to deliver a consistent message about the benefits of reducing our energy use.

But we need to go further still, to assess systematically the energy needs of the whole house working house-by-house and street-by-street. We therefore plan to roll out a Home Energy Advice service providing tailored in-home advice, and train Domestic Energy Assessors to provide this advice.

We plan to create an incentive for energy suppliers to provide Real Time Displays of energy consumption. These will provide consumers with real-time feedback on energy use. We also intend to mandate the installation of smart meters in every home.

We need to identify suitable trigger points for offering advice and support, for example when renovations are carried out, and we will consider developing accreditation for professionals providing advice and installation of energy efficiency measures.

Businesses and the public sector can also receive substantial benefits through energy saving behaviour. Support is already available to businesses and public sector through the Carbon Trust and Business Links and their devolved equivalents. We must ensure that these services fully meet the needs of the diverse organisations and buildings in the non-domestic energy sector.