UK government officials are set to urge the general public to turn down their heating as fears over possible winter blackouts loom.
Britons are to be asked by their government to turn down their heating before Christmas in a bid to save energy, reporting on Monday morning has claimed.
Like many other European nations, Britain is currently facing the not-insignificant risks of power outages over the coming winter months as a result of continent-wide shortages brought about by a deadly cocktail of green agenda policy and the Ukraine War.
According to a report by The Telegraph, the UK Business Secretary, Grant Shapps, is now set to address the general public before the winter holidays in order to give them advice on how to best save energy.
Shapps is expected to tell Britons to turn down their thermostats by two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) to reduce consumption, with advice on reducing boiler flow rates and installing energy-efficient lightbulbs also expected.
Meanwhile, other politicians in the UK Tory party are reportedly encouraging the government to tell the public to close their curtains at night as well as reduce the number of hours they heat their homes in a bid to keep consumption low.
While the advice due to be issued sometime over the coming weeks is reportedly aimed at enabling the average Briton to reduce their own energy bills, some elements of the forthcoming public campaign bear striking resemblance to British blackout avoidance plans.
In particular, the so-called “stage 2” of the “gas emergency” blackout prevention plan is said to involve a public awareness campaign aimed at getting the public to quickly curb their gas consumption.
The appeal to “use as little gas as possible” would be buttressed with campaigns on radio, social media and television, with posters and leaflet drops also likely to be employed to get Britons to lower their use.
Should such methods fail however, messaging would then shift to demanding that the public stop using gas entirely, and officials would begin cutting off businesses that consume the most of the limited resource.
Like with Britain’s on-and-off COVID lockdowns, the state documents note that such a move would require repeated heavy-handed demands to make the public stick to the programme, with it being expected that many would quickly grow tired of reducing their energy usage.
“It is anticipated that the effect of public appeals would diminish as time passes and that they would need to be repeated and reinforced at frequent intervals and eventually it is possible that the reduction in demand from the appeals would be insufficient,” the document reads.
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