Hanmer, Clare; McKenna, Eoghan; Zapata-Webborn, Ellen; Few, Jess; Pullinger, Martin; (2024) The impact of the ‘cost of living crisis’ in Britain: energy saving actions by fuel-poor households in winter 2022/23. In: Proceedings of eceee 2024 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency. European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy

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Abstract

The Smart Energy Research Laboratory (SERL) Observatory, which collects smart meter data from nearly 13,000 British homes, has the scope to gather additional data in times of change. In early 2023 a survey was sent out to participants to gauge the impact of the ‘cost of living crisis’ and associated steep rise in UK energy prices. More than 5,000households provided information about their income levels and whether they were struggling to pay fuel costs. Within this group we identified households spending more than 10 % of their income on energy (designated Expenditure Fuel Poverty: EFP) and those who reported being unable to afford to heat their living room to a comfortable temperature (designated Feeling Fuel Poor: FFP). In this paper we apply epidemiological techniques to SERL data to identify the demographic and dwelling characteristics of the EFP and FFP groups and compare these with the rest of the survey respondents. To examine the impact of energy-saving actions following the steep rise in prices, we assess the relative percentage reduction of gas demand for the two groups between winter 2021/22 and winter 2022/23 using a machine-learning counterfactual model. There was an overall reduction in gas demand of 9.5 % for the whole sample in January to March 2023 compared to the previous winter, suggesting widespread energy saving actions at a time of very high energy prices. Those who reported feeling fuel poor reduced their gas demand on average by 17.5 %, while the mean gas demand reduction of the larger EFP group was 10.0 %. We reflect on the benefits of epidemiological techniques applied to large scale, longitudinal smart meter and survey data, and discuss the implications for data collection and analysis and for policy to identify and support those in fuel poverty.

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