ABSTRACT
The first edition of this book commented that gas use for home heating wascontinuing to rise, despite the effect of improved insulation and betterconstruction standards. The impulses driving up energy use range from the understandable wish to heat our homes better in cold winters, to the rapid increase in the number of households as the UK population expands and household size falls. More households, of whatever size, add to heating demands because each one needs to be heated. The good news is that this increase appears to have tapered off. It may be increasing gas prices or the government’s support for better insulation in older homes, but the total amount of gas used by British houses does seem to be starting to fall. We’ll find later in this book that this is still not the case for electricity.
