Developing a benchmarking tool for measuring the effectiveness of local authority domestic energy reduction policies

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) promote Local Authorities as their preferred route for implementing policies aimed at reducing domestic sector energy consumption, and delivering the Government’s 2050 energy and climate targets. DECC provide data at lower layer super output area (LSOA) to aid monitoring strategies. These data in principle enable the change in energy demand over time and the relative energy use in different regions to be understood. However there is at present little incentive for Local Authorities to initiate local domestic reduction policies. Furthermore it remains unclear if national datasets are suitable for measuring and monitoring the success of Local Authorities. This paper argues the need for an improved benchmarking tool to measure the effectiveness of Local Authorities in this task. It utilises data – covering demographic, economic and climatic factors – to calculate descriptive statistics, and correlation and regression analysis to examine the relationships between these factors and domestic energy consumption. The analysis is to be expanded, incorporating further demographic, economic and built form data to try and develop a stronger statistical model, while collaboration with Local Authorities is to be sought in order to develop practical applications.