Low Carbon Hub CEO speaks on energy demand reduction

At the recent Eynsham Great Big Energy Saving Event, Barbara Hammond, founder and CEO of the Low Carbon Hub, a Project LEO partner gave a talk that highlighted the importance of demand reduction for the UK energy agenda.

Barbara set the scene, reflecting the worry for people across the UK as the energy and cost of living crises continue to bite hard. She refers back to our past national policy framework that disappeared by 2015, which was having a positive impact on our energy demand reduction.

In the talk, Barbara states that if we had continued with the framework, we would be going into this winter with the average household using 15-20% less energy, meaning a 15-20% reduction in our energy bills. Quite an eye-opening reality and more so when you consider that this reduction is twice the amount of energy that we relied on from Russian sources.

However, the outlook isn’t all doom and gloom. Research from CREDS suggests that, by pursuing and meeting our net-zero targets, we can actually halve our energy demand. Barbara puts this good news in context and discusses the ways we can achieve this, including retrofitting, a shift to an electricity-only energy supply and of course, a more flexible energy system. 

In the short speech, Barbara covered a lot of potentially complex areas, she distilled these down to some very important and ultimately positive messages for the future! If you want to watch her talk, you can access the recording here.