WITH ENERGY PRICES RISING FAST AND CLIMATE CHANGE NOT GETTING ANY BETTER, IT’S TIME TO CUT DOWN GAS USAGE – NOT JUST FOR OUR POCKETS, BUT FOR THE PLANET. OCTOPUS ENERGY JOINS US TO SHARE ITS TOP TIPS
There’s never been a better time to cut back on our gas usage: it pollutes the home, warms the planet, and costs more this winter than any year on record. So at the end of 2021, Octopus Energy launched its Winter Workout scheme, designed to reward customers who manage to reduce their gas usage, helping both their pockets and their carbon emissions. Nearly 250,000 customers signed up to the scheme, and have managed to cut their gas usage by 12% on average, and saved 5.8 million kilograms of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere!
If you’d like to lower your carbon emissions in a similar way, here are Octopus Energy’s top tips to get started…
1 Get your flow on
Getting your heating and hot water flowing at the right temperature can make gas go much further.
While there are plenty of arguments over thermostats, few people ever change the settings on their boiler itself. The key one here is the flow temperature. This is the temperature the water leaves the boiler at to heat your home or provide hot water.
At their default setting, these temperatures are usually too high. This doesn’t make your home warmer, but it can add massively to your bills and emissions. It’s like putting your foot flat to the floor when driving – it’s hugely wasteful, but doesn’t really affect your journey time.
If you have a combi boiler, we recommend setting your flow temperature to 50°C for heating and 55°C for hot water – it’ll take a little longer to heat up, but the gas and CO2 savings make it more than worthwhile!
2 Blowing in the wind
A continuous draft can quickly undo all the good work of your heating.
While ventilation is important for air quality and health, it’s also the first place that heat escapes. If you can feel a draft, grab a draft excluder and plug the gap – and remember to close any open windows before the sun goes down. See the tips on page 57 for draft-blocking ideas to get you started.
3 Hot water, or HOT water
Does hot water help to kill the nasties that are on your dirty dishes?
Most of us waste gas heating the hot water for our taps to 60°C, only to cool it down again by mixing it with cold water when we want to use it for showers or baths. But how hot do we need the water to clean our dishes?
At 60°C, hot water can cause you serious scalding in under 5 seconds.
However, for water to be hot enough to kill the bacteria or other nasties on your plates, it
