According to the BBC, the upcoming energy white paper is going to propose that every home in the UK be able to request a free — free! — energy monitor. Wow.
In the article, a designer of monitors rightly says:
“The biggest risk is that after the government announces this, they might specify this too weakly to make it useful. We might end up making 22m pieces of plastic that end up in people’s drawers because they aren’t any good.”
Of course the devil is in the detail but still, if every household had access to real-time information on their energy consumption, it could make a significant contribution to improving the efficiency of domestic energy use; review studies show it could save 5 to 15% of annual consumption. So keep your eyes open this summer when the white paper will be published detailing this and hopefully other equally newsworthy proposals.
One Comment
Hi James, thanks for the comment on my site, that cleared my confusion up somewhat. As you mention here though the companies are going to have to give these monitors away for free. So obviously they are going to go for the cheapest option for them! And so it will be very unlikely that anyone will get a monitor like the ones shown on the BBC website.