A guide to helping customers save money on their energy bills

With the cost of energy bills still being high, energy consumers will need support from businesses they interact with. You could be supporting your customers by providing advice on how to reduce home energy bills. 

A typical household could save up to £564 a year by following our tips and even more by making home energy efficiency upgrades. 

Here, we explain how to best engage customers with energy efficiency advice through understanding housing stock and implementing home upgrades.

Around 22% of the UK’s carbon emissions come from domestic households using energy to heat or cool rooms, generate hot water and power appliances and electronic devices. Most energy usage goes to heating empty spaces and hot water heating, accounting for over 53% of the average household energy bill*.

Creating a more energy efficient household requires energy efficient behaviour changes or upgrades to many different property variables – this could include switching to a renewable heating system like a heat pump, topping up insulation, installing double glazed windows or investing in smart heating controls.

You can use home energy as a key topic in your communications to engage and support customers in making their homes more energy efficient, which could help them lower their energy bills. Your content in these communications should include effective energy saving habits, recommendations for home upgrades and savings organised by property type.

*Savings are for a typical three-bedroom, gas-heated home in Great Britain, using a gas price of 7.4p/kWh and electricity price of 28.3p/kWh (based on April 2022 price cap). Water savings are based on average occupancy. This household is projected to spend a total £1,970 on energy annually, including standing charge. 

There are many benefits to adopting energy efficient behaviour, so reminding consumers of these benefits and targeting your communications around them can be key. If you want your customers to take action, lead with these benefits.

Try messages such as:

• Saving energy at home can lower bills and reduce carbon emissions.
• Installing new measures can increase the value of the property and avoid any issues (broken boiler, damp, etc).
• Futureproof your home against changes in the energy market.

Key recommendations: Avoid using jargon such as ‘carbon neutral’ and ‘net zero’ and instead use terms such as ‘tackling climate change’ and ‘saving energy and money.’ Using better established terms and talking with emotional language can often be more effective.

Focus on solutions that individuals can engage with to create positive reinforcement. For example, quick, low to no-cost behavioural changes can bypass barriers such as time, cost and hassle, meaning energy consumers are more likely to take action.

There are currently around 29 million homes in the UK, with 62% of those below the recommended minimum Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C. These homes are generally more in need of advice and services to support energy efficiency, although any type of home can save money on energy bills with the right advice.

You might already have some data that details the home energy characteristics of your region. This data can be used to target and support vulnerable energy consumers, fuel poor households, or households looking to invest in energy efficient products.

A surprising amount of energy data on UK homes is freely available from the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), which has released all EPCs, Display Energy Certificates (DECs) and Air Conditioning Inspection Reports (ACIRs) for free.

This data is useful for a wide range of organisations, including:

• Banks looking to implement green finance services.
• Local authorities looking to support residents or create an effective net zero strategy.
• Researchers looking to understand domestic energy use.
• Product manufacturers looking to create new energy efficient products.
• Policymakers making real data-driven decisions.

We’ve worked with local authorities in England and Scotland who have found this data difficult to analyse and use effectively without the right experience.

Here at Energy Saving Trust, we’ve spent many years handling domestic housing data and have finely tuned a method to extract and present EPC data in an easy-to-use format, as well as fill in missing gaps in the data using our Home Analytics and Portfolio Energy Assessment Tool data services.

With data and energy modelling, it’s possible to run, test and model different scenarios to find the most effective way to get fuel bill savings and SAP score increases. This can give the best course of actions for your energy efficiency campaigns, product deployment or carbon reduction plans.

We help businesses engage customers with energy efficiency. Below are just some of the services we offer:

• Advice from energy experts. We can work with your marketing team to develop tailored and engaging energy efficiency content with our energy insight consultancy.
• Use our Home Energy Efficiency Tool to bolster your customer home improvement advice with our market leading calculation engine, to provide a range of tailored energy efficiency advice to your customers.
• Help your customers save energy at home with our Energy Efficiency Advice Tool available as a website API or mobile app. It delivers the most effective energy saving methods for every room in the home.
• Our energy advice training is for businesses wishing to support their customers with behavioural, low and no cost savings advice, debt management and signposting to other services and support.

With the cost of energy likely to be a big topic for the foreseeable future, it’s worth investing in content, tools or staff who can offer energy saving advice to customers.