Thread by @RGurumurthy

Suddenly everyone is talking about energy efficiency! 🔥For the first time ever, it matters both to consumers, and Treasury. Now is our moment, energy wonks: here’s how to seize it. 🧵

Obligate energy companies to tell customers how to save 10-20% on gas bills at no cost: lowering flow temp of boilers (8%); lowering thermostats by one degree (13%). Etc…

(btw, here’s how to lower your boiler flow temp: do your own and tell five friends! -- shorturl.at/bfITV)

Digital volunteers: during COVID, hundreds of thousands of people volunteered through the @GoodSamApp . These volunteers already know the highest risk people in their communities: let’s ask them to help them get their homes ready this winter.

£100bn quid pro quo: should HMG subsidies be conditioned on reducing energy usage?

(FWIW: I think it should be compulsory to consider energy saving measures by responding to a checklist of suggestions, even if they are saying no to the measures. This preserves choice, but ensures it’s an active one.)

Reminders: people are busy with life. Remind them on a weekly basis of 3 things they can do to reduce demand.

Smart subsidies: if we give people cash they are still incentivised to reduce demand. Reducing the bill itself does not do this.

Abolish the standing charge.

If some or all of the energy rebates are paid back through energy bills, put them on gas and not electricity to make heat pumps cheaper than boilers. We're subsidising heat pumps with 5k grants, but we'll struggle to sustain this with mass deployment.

Bring back a better version of the Green Deal: people care enough to use it now! Energy companies should offer to pay for cavity and loft insulation, and other measures, with a payback period and interest rate that guarantees savings on bills.

Test, test, test. We are in uncharted waters here. No one knows which ideas will work best. So we should do 6 weeks of AB testing before the winter hits to figure it all out.

Finally, let's not assume the crisis is 1 year, or even 3. Possible to have protracted crisis and high bills for some time. Need to accelerate phase out of gas boilers and efficiency of homes by setting minimum home energy efficiency standard that ratchets up over 5-10 yrs.