Fuel poverty policy is at an important crossroads. More than twenty years ago, Brenda Boardman’s work was a catalyst for drawing politicians’ and
researchers’ attention to the struggle of fuel poverty. In 2016 fuel poverty is still an issue, still a politically charged societal problem, still a central topic for consideration in the design of national energy policy and still a consideration for energy suppliers. 2017 will see the introduction of a new (set of) policies aimed at alleviating fuel poverty (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2015b) but it is not something that will be able to be remedied in the life of one single policy. Furthermore, the UK energy system will see considerable changes over the forthcoming decades as carbon emissions are intended to be drastically reduced, including aspirations to achieve almost zero emissions from heating and cooling of buildings (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2009; Department of Energy & Climate Change 2012c). This will result in a significant change to heating technology in the UK in homes that will require consumers’ acceptability and understanding (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2012c).
There are a number of aspects of fuel poverty policy that come together to form a picture of the national effort to understand and tackle the situation.
Details and expectations of past fuel poverty targets have been notoriously poorly articulated (White et al. 2014; Moore 2012b). The most recent fuel poverty strategy has a target to ensure that fuel poor homes achieve a minimum energy efficiency rating of SAP band C by 2030, as the UK government believe that energy efficiency should be made a priority in tackling the problem (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2015a). This target places emphasis on fuel poverty-proofing the housing stock and evaluating progress in terms of the state of the housing stock, not
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in terms of the number of installations undertaken or the self-perception of residents. This emphasises mitigation of fuel poverty focused on the long-term impact of domestic energy efficiency and therefore the subsequent energy consumption needed to achieve adequate energy services. This has long been argued as the best way to tackle fuel poverty since initial discussions began in the 1990s (Boardman 1991) and has continued to be pushed for by many campaigners and commentators ( CSE 2014; Bird et al. 2010; National Energy Action 2011a; Energy Action Scotland & National Energy Action 2009). However, having found that the experiential
understanding demonstrates little knowledge of the technical specification of the home and the procedural work of local organisations rarely engaging with this at a deep technical level, a target of this type appears to reiterate the disconnect between the statistical and the experiential and continue to put pressure on the procedural way of knowing to be an intermediary in terms of flows of knowledge and resources.
However there is another consideration for the use of this new target to tackle fuel poverty. What will the future look like if fuel poverty policies continue as they are at the moment? My analysis makes it clear that householders have a different definition or understanding of the problem than the government. Therefore whilst the current energy-efficiency focused target may be achieved, it leaves questions as to what progress might look like from the other ways of knowing. If and when this target is achieved, will there be no households that report a struggle to afford adequate energy services? Ultimately improving the energy efficiency of the housing stock will improve the experience for residents in their home. But will organisations base evaluations around the number of increased SAP points or bands that their action has led to? How does this change these organisations’ role in giving behavioural advice and social support, given that this does not obviously translate into an improvement in SAP points? How will fuel poor households’ experience of energy services be changed? Therefore my fifth recommendation is that the government stipulate different targets for tackling fuel poverty at the national scale and the local scale.
Looking at UK energy policy generally, householders will also be affected by the introduction of smart meters over the next decade (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2015b) and a move to low carbon heating by 2050 (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2012c). Both of these changes brings with them
substantial opportunities where householders, fuel poor and non-fuel poor, will be interacting with their domestic energy systems differently than previously and be in direct contact with organisations involved in domestic energy services. Therefore, this
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is a key time when lessons from this research can be learnt and applied to this national roll out of smart meters.
Furthermore, the move to roll out smart meters across the UK comes with a number of potential changes to the technology that householders’ use as part of their everyday energy consumption, such as with the introduction of in-home energy consumption displays, smart heating controls and time-of-use energy tariffs. Residents will have access to more information about their energy consumption, accurate and in real time, relatable to specific costs and specific energy services. This will be a substantial change to the potential knowledge that the experiential way of knowing has available and may change the way that people are able to judge their own situation. They will have, for the first time, access to accurate detailed high- frequency data (Darby 2012) that can be compared with other households that also has some commonality with how the statistical way of knowing understands fuel poverty. In-home displays will be drawing on a quantification of energy consumption, through utilising real time measurements. Furthermore, it is likely that national data from smart meters – available on a scale and over a breadth never seen before in England for domestic energy consumption - will inform, change and improve the accuracy of the modelling of the required energy component for the creation of fuel poverty statistics through increasing the evidence base on accurate energy
consumption data. The sixth recommendation is that the additional data gathered from the use of smart meters across the UK is systematically reviewed and incorporated into understandings of fuel poverty, both statistical and procedural.
Whilst the presence of some modelling assumptions and certain coefficients may be kept, with all this data potentially available, a clearer, more accurate and reliable picture will emerge of average domestic energy consumption in English households in a way that the modelling processes for fuel poverty can ultimately be collaborated and improved if necessary. The LIHC definition of fuel poverty is designed with an intention of not leaving fuel poor households behind as standards improve across the board (Department of Energy & Climate Change 2015b). Despite this, it is likely that there will always be some householders in England that report a struggle to afford adequate energy services, especially as energy prices are likely to increase.