Why, What, When, How, Where, and Who? Developing UK Policy on Metering, Billing and Energy Display Devices

Panel: Human and Social Dimensions of Energy Use: Trends and their Implications

Author:
Sarah Darby, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Abstract

The European Directive on Energy End-use Efficiency and Energy Services requires EU member states to ensure that energy consumers have frequent and informative billing, along with meters that reflect consumption accurately and provide information on time of use. There is a lively debate in the UK on what new forms of metering, tariffing and billing are feasible, and on possible environmental and social consequences. The main parties to that debate have been government and the energy regulator, electricity and gas suppliers, consumer bodies, environmental organisations, and manufacturers of meters and metering accessories.

This paper reports on and analyses some of the issues relating to billing, metering and attempts to change consumer behaviour in the UK. It highlights the dispute over the desirability of requiring suppliers to give feedback displays to residential customers in advance of a smart metering rollout, outlining tensions between anticipated benefits to the utilities (from smart metering) and to end-users and the environment (from improved feedback leading to conservation). Definitions, interpretations of the Directive, and the institutional context for feedback and smart metering are analysed in relation to research evidence for energy feedback as a tool for carbon reduction and demand management. The uses and limitations of the research literature in a contested area of policy are discussed.