Here in the United States, and originally in most of the developed world, we took it for granted that our homes were indeed our castles. As long as we were paying our bills and not interfering with the neighbors, we have always operated under the presumption that, within our own homes, we were in control and could do as we liked. That's certainly how it is here in our Susitna Valley digs; in our home, I am the man of the house, the king in his castle, and what I say goes.
As long as it's OK with my wife.
That's changing in some places. In the United Kingdom, the Net Zero policies have dumped a lot of taxpayer money into getting people to refurbish their homes to be more energy efficient, including such unreliable and inefficient schemes as rooftop solar panels and heat pumps. Now, there's a new wrinkle: the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) wants to use smart meters to monitor these homes and ensure homeowners aren't keeping the thermostat set too high.
In other words, they are monitoring energy usage, which can only lead to rationing.
Owners of energy-efficient homes were targeted by the government with “nanny state” research exploring how they could be discouraged from turning up the heating, it can be revealed.
Officials in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) wanted to know how people could be dissuaded from consuming more energy after installing net-zero upgrades such as insulation and double glazing.
London Economics, a think tank, was tasked in Feb 2024, under the Conservative government, with carrying out an in-depth review of academic studies on consumer behaviour and proposed using smart meters to “circumvent habits” and introducing “environmental taxes”.
Circumvent habits? Like, the habit of not having to shiver yourself to sleep in your own home? And note the leftist fallback scheme: Taxing you for being comfortable in your own home.
Here's the interesting bit; all this was focused on people who already were perceived as having some moral high ground for having loaded up their homes with green energy horse squeeze - and determining whether that perceived moral high ground may make them more likely to turn the thermostat up a nudge.
Researchers also focused on why households might use more energy after having improved their home’s energy efficiency.
The report cited studies that blamed “moral licensing” whereby “individuals justify ‘immoral’ behaviour (such as turning up their heating) by having previously engaged in moral behaviour (such as installing energy efficient measures)”.
It noted, however, that this phenomenon “has not been widely studied or observed in the context of energy efficiency” or so-called comfort taking.
This, then, appears to have been a bit of elementary research - not really research, and I hesitate to use the term "study," as it seems likely that this undertaking was working backwards from a conclusion. But consider for a moment just what this study is looking into, and the possible policy outcomes of it, should some future government decide to enshrine it in policy: This will seek to determine the motivations of homeowners in their energy consumption, to look into the energy use of people who have remodeled their homes to meet Net Zero demands, and to prevent them from taking advantage of that to make themselves a little more comfortable - in their own homes.
This, folks, is nanny-statism run amok. This is what happens when an agenda based largely on a mix of climate panic-mongering and really, really poor energy policy gains the upper hand in a country. It's happening in the United Kingdom now. The Net Zero advocates and climate scolds will want to do it here in the United States next.
Read More: How Net Zero Destroyed a Scottish City
The Hidden Cost of Renewable Power: Toxic 'Green' Waste to Hit 1 Million Tons
Here's the tidbit of good news:
The research was published on a government website last week. A government spokesman insisted there were no plans to implement the report’s suggestions, which were made before the last election. The Conservatives declined to comment.
No plans - yet.
Look, a law-abiding taxpayer's decisions in their own home should be sacrosanct. Nobody has the right to tell anyone else how warm or how cool to keep their homes as long as they are paying their own utility bills. In public housing, what the UK calls "council housing" Then the taxpayers are on the hook, and if the tenants are too warm in summer and too chilly in winter, call it an incentive to get out. But homeowners paying their own bills?
We're fortunate here in our home in one respect; our winter comfort is largely tied to how much firewood I want to haul into the house. But most of the country doesn't have that option, and the green energy advocates don't really like wood stoves, either - all that CO2 and particulate, you know. But now we see early indications of yet another green energy scheme, this one eventually aimed at regulating how comfortable we are in our homes.
And the American left, make no mistake, will look on this with envy and want to replicate it here.
