Winning the argument on energy consumption

1 October 2025

Following his appalling United Nations speech last month, everybody knows that President Trump is a climate change denier. Andrew Warren questions the motives behind such scepticism.

The US energy secretary Chris Wright is similarly utterly dismissive of attempts to reach net zero, calling it a “sinister tool to shrink human freedom”. 

He scoffs that “the United Kingdom is very proud they’ve reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 40%. Their argument is, we are the model for the world. But what they never say out loud is: where did that 40% reduction come from? Their total energy consumption has gone down 30%. So, three-quarters of the reduction in greenhouse gas is they just don’t use that energy anymore.”

Actually, on this last point, Wright is spot on. The UK government has never emphasised just how much of the heavy lifting on carbon reduction is due to the more efficient use of energy throughout the economy.

I have a little party trick I like to play. I play it mostly with the great and the good who run our government, be they senior civil servants or ministers, or even important media commentators. I ask them, how much do you think consumption of energy has increased over the past couple of decades? Inevitably the response is along the lines of “quite considerably”. The more astute ask how much Gross Domestic Product has risen over these years. They then suggest: “Take that same percentage figure, then add a bit”.

Whilst they are about it, many comment upon the enormous increase in gadgets powered by electricity. And the desire of households to bask in heating temperatures far higher than a generation ago. When I reveal that overall energy consumption has actually declined by 28% over that period, the immediate reaction is all too frequently: “Are you sure?” To which the answer is, definitely.

Energy intensity  

Last month the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University published a review of the past 20 years of official energy forecasting. It found that, almost without exception, these have been grossly overestimating the amount of energy of all types we would be using in future. The energy intensity of our economy – the amount of energy we need to create wealth – has improved enormously during this century.  

But unlike the rest of us, Wright is dismayed by this trend. He reckons that the “UK’s economy has suffered (sic), thanks to net zero policies which served to drive down energy consumption since 2005 – dropping from 10.6 to 7.6 exajoules.”

This esoteric reaction can be explained. Prior to becoming the US head of energy policy, Wright was the CEO of Liberty Energy, a company exclusively concerned with gas fracking. So, he will have been particularly aware of the UK market, where gas consumption has fallen by one-third (more than any other fuel), and fracking has proved to be a commercial and political failure.

Good policies

Doubtless one of the main reasons for this precipitate fall in gas sales was the decision taken by the then energy efficiency Minister, Lord Larry Whitty, to alter the building regulations in 2005 to mandate the installation of condensing boilers for both new build and replacement. Such boilers are around 30% more efficient than their predecessors. And over 15 million of these are now operating in British buildings.

Add to that the big promotional programmes to stimulate insulation being installed, which ran up until 2012 (but have subsequently been decimated), and you can swiftly see why gas consumption levels have, as one sales executive put it to me, “fallen off a cliff”.

There is no good reason why this trend should not continue. There are still approaching 9 million homes on the gas network running gas-guzzling boilers and many of these could readily switch to electric heating. There are still some 15 million homes with grossly inadequate insulation. Still a majority without energy efficient glazing.

It is not just in the gas market where consumers have benefitted from improved efficiency. Take electricity usage. In 2005 we consumed 29,981 ktoe of electricity. By 2024 that fell to 23,903 ktoe – a drop of 25% in electricity consumption.

European directives 

Every winter we hear voices of alarm saying that the lights are going to go out unless we have more power available. Gullible tabloids have run the same headlines, emphasising the (non-existent) ever-increasing demand for fuel.

In practice, one of the main drivers of falling electricity consumption – and why the lights have transparently not gone out – has been due to implementation of the European ecodesign and energy labelling directives. The higher A to F energy standards set across Europe for electricity-consuming goods like washing machines and refrigerators, for vacuum cleaners and dishwashers, for televisions and telephones, have eliminated the worst energy performers, and pushed consumers towards far less wasteful artefacts. Similar measures are fast being abolished by Trump in America.

 And of course, one of the main reasons the lights haven’t gone out was the decision taken on light bulbs, to ban incandescents. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why NESO, the official body tasked with creating the best pathway to net zero by 2050, is calling for “rolling out minimum efficiency standards, similar to those to improve light bulb efficiency, to other appliances.”

My party trick currently works. Consequently, policy makers can see that the First Fuel (as the International Energy Agency correctly dubs energy efficiency) has contributed enormously this century. Over ensuing years, it can contribute far more. But only just so long as doctrinaire, reactionary politics doesn’t deliberately hinder progress. 

Andrew Warren chairs the British Energy Efficiency Federation