Sacha Deshmukh

Smart technology for a cleaner, greener future

<em><p style="font-family:gill sans">Smart meters show people what they’re using in near real-time – and eight in ten people who have them take steps to reduce their energy use</p></em>

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Ahead of the Paris climate conference, there is intense focus on the carbon policies of governments around the world. To reduce global warming, we need to find cleaner ways of generating electricity. But we also need to think about how we transmit energy across smarter grids, and how we use the energy we already produce more efficiently.

Measures to secure supply and manage demand are equally important. Both were covered in depth at our ‘Smarter Britain, Smarter Environment‘ event earlier this month. Top speakers – Lord (Gus) O’Donnell, Jonathon Porritt CBE, Sara Bell, Robert Denda and Lord Bourne – considered what was described by Porritt as ‘the biggest challenge humankind has ever faced.’

Household demand makes up around 28 per cent of the energy use in Britain. As a nation, we are using less and less energy in our homes due to greater awareness of energy saving and more efficient appliances.

But there’s still a long way to go. We can save 32 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 25 years by getting people to change their behaviour through smart meters, which will be offered to every home by 2020.

Smart meters show people what they’re using in near real-time – and eight in ten people who have them take steps to reduce their energy use. They are an essential building block of a smarter energy infrastructure for Britain – which will help us manage demand at a national level with time-of-use tariffs, smarter appliances and better integration of micro-generation technologies into the wider grid.

In a new paper written for Smart Energy GB, Professor Dieter Helm says smart meters ‘are part of a profound set of changes in energy markets, which will transform the way electricity is generated, supplied and consumed. They are part of the solution to climate change, and yet few have yet appreciated their likely impacts.’

That’s why the smart meter roll-out is vital for Britain, and such an important part of any plan to curb emissions.

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