Andrew Sissons

Thanks Adrian! Look forward to reading

It is, although the government will also suffer a lot of pain if energy bills rise!

The energy edit Every six weeks Andrew Sissons - deputy director of the sustainable future mission - will assess the most important signals and trends underpinning the UK’s energy transition.

The most important takeaway is that energy security was never an empty phrase. We live in a world where fossil fuel crises are always possible and always painful.
Even if oil and gas prices fall back this time (🤞) we should remember the lessons of 2022 and work to rely less on them.

4. Don't forget businesses. There is no price cap for businesses, and government may need to find ways to support them.
The ideal thing is to help them invest in their own electricity generation and energy efficiency...

If the government does have to step in to help with energy bills, it should consider introducing a price ceiling and floor for gas bills. This would set a range – perhaps between 5p and 10p per kWh – that the gas price could move between. Above 10p, the government would subsidise bills (at roughly the same level as the Energy Price Guarantee), while below 5p it would tax them, building up reserves against future crises in the process. Volatile gas prices are a big problem for the economy, and limiting their movement upwards and downwards could help make the UK economy more resilient in future.

3. Consider government support for bills, but do so carefully. Bill support may be inevitable, but recognise that doing so may require tighter fiscal policy in the longer term.

Also: if gas prices spike, look at measures to limit the volatility in consumer bills in future...

Cutting the sludge: 10 things governments across Great Britain should do to make getting a heat pump easier Our analysis reveals the common barriers for heat pump installations - and ways to tackle these.

Realistically, electrification takes time, and the best time to do it was before the crisis hit (our slow progress after 2022 was a big mistake).

But government should try to accelerate electrification. Remove more costs from electricity bills! Remove the sludge around getting a heat pump!

Chart showing the GB electricity - gas price ratio. It fell from over 5 in 2021 to a low of 3.5 in late 2022, driven by high gas prices. It has since risen above 4 once again

2. Electrify! The best way to tackle a fossil fuel crisis is to avoid using them altogether - via heat pumps, EVs and clean energy.

One small silver lining of a rise in gas prices is that it tends to lower the electricity-gas price ratio
(because wholesale costs make up more of the total gas bill)

Money Saving Boiler Challenge Find out how to save money on your bills and reduce energy waste from your home with this one simple step. www.moneysavingboilerchallenge.com

This was something the government got wrong after 2022. It didn't want to tell people what to do, and its Energy Efficiency Taskforce was quietly canned after 6 months.

Despite that, we and other charities helped people save money... for example:

Free and low-cost energy-saving actions to bring down bills, improve energy security and help the planet Nesta commissioned Cambridge Architectural Research to model the savings that can be made through lesser-known, free or low-cost energy-saving measures

So what can governments actually do about it?

1. The most important answer is one that has been largely overlooked so far: help people save energy!
There are loads of low cost, quick measures households, and government should be unashamed about telling people about them.

Chart showing share of total household spending on electricity (1.6%), gas (0.8%) and vehicle fuel (2.2%) in 2024

And oil, which wasn't such a big feature of the 2022 crisis in Europe, is likely to be heavily affected this time too. Electricity, gas and petrol combined make up nearly 5% of household spending - a share which is likely to rise if prices spike...

Wholesale gas prices and total energy bills for GB since 2018. There was a big spike in 2022, driven by a rise in wholesale gas prices, and prices have remained above their previous average since...

First, worth just restating what happens when oil and gas prices spike.
Because the GB energy system still relies a lot on both oil and gas, you will almost certainly see electricity prices rise too. Total bills will rise, and might not come back down again in a hurry

The energy edit Every six weeks Andrew Sissons - deputy director of the sustainable future mission - will assess the most important signals and trends underpinning the UK’s energy transition.

What can Britain actually do about an energy crisis? What did we do right and wrong in 2022, and what can we learn?

Here's a thread on my new piece on what to do about an energy crisis...
www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

Gah yes I do!

The energy edit Every six weeks Andrew Sissons - deputy director of the sustainable future mission - will assess the most important signals and trends underpinning the UK’s energy transition.

New piece from me on the possible energy crisis...

How might a 2026 crisis be different from 2026? And crucially, what could we actually *do* about it?

www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-ene...

Climate Change Committee chart showing the best uses for an extra MWh of clean electricity ranked by carbon savings. Displacing coal generation is the best options, followed by powering an EV, then powering a heat pump, then displacing gas generation

Per the Climate Change Committee, you save quite a bit more carbon by using an extra MWh of clean power to power a heat pump than to displace gas generation.

(It’s also not really either/or - there are limits to how fast you can do each, and best to do them all at the same time)

The impact of Brexit on immigration to the UK A new analysis finds that Brexit raised the number of foreign-born workers in the UK by about 200,000, but resulted in a more dramatic shift in the countries of origin.

New research by me @jdportes.bsky.social: we find that the end of free movement and the new immigration regime rather modestly raised the number of foreign-born workers in Britain – by about 200,000 in 2024. Thread. www.cer.eu/insights/imp...

Yes the 11 flats is a much harder problem (and not like we’re solving much easier problems v quickly either)

Ah surely you’ll be on a heat network though?

Plenty of advantages to that, but surely a more contentious policy intervention!

Not an especially big deal technically to put a heat pump in converted flats. Bit of a question about whether you put the infrastructure under the street (like gas) or outside the building.
The biggest challenge is coordinating across leaseholders, landlords etc.

We do quite a lot of work on that - particularly mapping which homes are likely to need which kind of heating system

Yes, a lot!
But obviously need to use the time until winter wisely (and oil and electricity prices will also be a big issue over summer)

3. Customers will look for substitutes to oil and gas if possible. There are many options - insulation, electricity, other types of fossil fuel, biomass, plenty of others.

Barring a much wider disaster, we won’t run out of oil and gas, but prices will rise, we’ll consume less and seek alternatives

2. Suppliers will look for ways to increase supply wherever possible, as long as the higher price makes it worthwhile. That may mean some countries raising production (including some that wasn’t previously viable), finding new routes to market (like the Red Sea), etc.

It’s worth dwelling on the basics of how markets respond to a supply shock like this.

1. People who currently buy oil and gas have two options: pay a higher price, or cut back consumption. The price will rise until enough demand has gone to meet supply

Impeccable timing because, as I’m sure you all know, heat pumps are the absolute best tool we have available for tackling gas crises

BBC Radio 4 - Evan Davis's Heat Pump Challenge, Heat pumps in the home Evan Davis explores how heat pumps work and why government wants us to install them.

Oh look at that… with impeccable timing, @evanhd.bsky.social appears to be back talking about heat pumps on the BBC!

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Visit a heat pump Visit a heat pump near you in real life. See it in action and get your questions answered by heat pump owners.

A good time to push www.visitaheatpump.com

Gas isn’t my area, but I *think* gas storage is a bit of a distraction. Britain will still have gas available (most of it comes from Norway via pipelines). The issue is the price will go up as the overall European supply decreases.

The scope for storing your way out of a gas crisis is limited…

As always a thoughtful piece from Tim and honest in North Sea realities

My 2.5 points of difference
1) there is a lag between lower tax rates to boost investment/exploration and the increased supplies that lead to more income
1.5) UK is still a costlier, mature basin max exploration not guaranteed