Helping households reduce energy use in homes is a triple win: bringing down household bills, improving energy security, and reducing carbon emissions. With the Treasury now subsidising energy bills for millions of homes, saving energy now will help reduce the bill for taxpayers in the medium term.

Nesta commissioned Cambridge Architectural Research (CAR) to model the savings that can be made through lesser-known, free or low-cost measures, supported by an academic literature review by the Energy House Labs Team at the University of Salford. This report is a brief summary of a detailed spreadsheet, containing the data, modelling and assumptions, which we have published alongside it. The 2022 spreadsheet can be found at the bottom of this page.

Since the report was published in October 2022, modelling figures were updated in October 2023 (represented in the spreadsheet above) has been updated and the new figures are below.

The updated modelling found that households can make around £160 of savings on their annual energy bills. This includes:

• £65 on average by turning down their combi boiler flow temperature to 60°C
  
• £17 by setting the hot water temperature on a combi boiler to 42°C
  
• and an additional £78 by turning down the radiator valves outside the living room by one setting.

Potential savings from turning down boiler flow temperature and radiator valves together slightly lowers the possible individual savings of each. Taken together, the three actions equate to £160 annual savings in total.