Ofgem boss urges households to cut back on gas and electric use this winter

Campaign to be launched to encourage people to reduce their energy use

Consumers should cut down on their electricity and gas use this winter, the chief of energy regulator Ofgem has said.

Jonathan Brearley, Ofgem’s chief executive officer, told Energy UK’s conference that “all of us could be thinking about how to reduce our energy use where possible”.

“This is not only the most direct way to reduce our bills – it helps with security of supply, contributes to decarbonisation and saves money for public finances,” he said.

Jonathan Brearley appears before a Commons committee in May (PA)

Mr Brearley referenced Nesta’s boiler challenge, which is encouraging customers to lower the flow temperature on their boilers.

“If many of us do this, this can save billions of pounds of Her Majesty’s Treasury,” Mr Brearley said.

He said that Ofgem will soon be launching a campaign to teach customers how they can reduce their energy consumption.

Mr Brearley spoke of energy-saving measures such as “only have heating on when required, turning off lights when you leave the room, switch off devices or put on standby”.

He warned that the sector was “heading into a winter in the middle of a major European land war” and accused Russia of “using gas as a geopolitical weapon”.

Opening his speech, Mr Brearley said: “This has been quite a year. I know this industry and, most importantly, our consumers have been through a difficult time.

“Unprecedented is a word too often used for energy in 2022, but I genuinely cannot think of a time that produced such great challenges.”

Referring to the current energy crisis, Mr Brearley insisted: “We must make sure that this never happens again.”

Households across the UK are facing surging energy bills (PA)

He said that the UK must continue “reducing our exposure to international gas markets”.

It comes after Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive officer at Energy UK, the trade association for the energy industry, said that No 10’s failure to roll out an energy-saving campaign was “baffling”.

Ms Pinchbeck warned that “in millions of homes this winter, even with government support, it will be a grim and frightening time.”

She added: “It remains baffling to me that the government isn’t grabbing this opportunity to reduce our gas demand this winter and beyond by communicating simple ways to reduce our energy use in homes, and by ramping up our investment in buildings.”

Andrew Ward, chief executive of retail at Scottish Power, said he couldn’t see any logical reason why the government wouldn’t roll out a communications campaign about how people could lower their energy use.

“We’re not going to wait [for government],” he said. “We’re going to talk to [customers] about how they can take interventions themselves.”

Speaking earlier in the day, climate minister Graham Stuart MP said that his role involved “making sure that our lights stay on this winter”.

He said that "we have contingency plans, our systems should cope, it’s very unlikely that we will see conditions that will lead to blackouts."

His comments come after National Grid’s winter outlook warned that households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia and Britain experiences a cold snap.