The United Kingdom generates less electricity per person than in the 1970s

There's lots of amusingly Telegraph-esque outrage being posted here. But the article makes it clear that the reduction is due to reduction in demand, due in part to welcome improvements in efficiency, but also regrettable deindustrialization, and (neutral?) increased importing of electricity. Nobody is planning to ration electricity suppies.

I also wonder what the contribution of domestic solar and on-site industrial generation is? I'm a dev in a large manufacturing business and two of our three factory buildings are now covered in solar cells which power a lot of our operations. Some big industrial sites have on-site wind-powered generation too. Is that counted as generation in these stats? Or is it just manifested as reduced demand?

(Edit: added "being posted", "welcome" and "(neutral?)" for clarity)

I was at a conference last year where one of the speakers was from National Grid. Not only these morons had in mind that electricity demand should decrease (even before AI, it was obvious that demand would go up as we are moving away from fossil fuel with both heating and transportation going electric).

But their great idea to deal with the shortage is intermittent availability of power. You won't be able to wash your clothes when you feel like, you will have to adapt to when there is spare power, like in developing countries. This is just a regression in technological progress.

I saw the same messaging in France where the current president started his mandate with a grand programme to switch off a third of nuclear power plants.

If anyone thinks adults are in charge, let alone engineers, you are greatly mistaken.

Let's get this straight: yes, there's been a reduction in demand and increases in efficiency, but electricity is objectively extremely expensive in the UK now. Energy is being heavily imported.

This has disastrous consequences for businesses and the economy. It is the number one biggest problem facing the UK economy after the huge government debt and crippling taxes... although there are a number of other problems I could mention.

The decline in energy from 2003-present lines up nicely with the phase out of incandescent lights in favour of CFLs and of CFLs in favour of LEDs.

Lets say a house typically had 5 60W bulbs on for 8hrs a day, now replaced with an 8W bulb. That would be a 2 kWH reduction, which roughly corresponds to the drop shown in the data.

EDIT: actually now that I think about it, 2kWh per-household is probably less than 1kWh per-capita. It's still a good chunk though!

The linked iea data shows that the reduction is roughly 50/50 industrial and residential. So the deindustrialisation narrative is part of the story but improved efficiency at home is also a significant factor.

Interesting - I had never associated the rate of energy consumption with jingoism, but based on some of the comments here it clearly is.

I guess it’s sort of a “I drive a large inefficient car and that’s a good thing” kind of situation? Excessive unnecessary production and consumption is a positive trait?

It’s just plain expensive thanks to the shitty price everything by most expensive source method. Of course people minimise use

Currently paying 0.33 usd a unit.

Seems generally like a good thing? I know the biggest difference I can think of in my lifetime is just how much better insulated houses are. Not on a par with Scandinavia, but still massively improved from even the peak electricity consumption period in the charts of 2005. I wonder how much that contributes to the overall reduction in demand.

This is great, maybe!

There are lots of factors that feed into this: lots of solar, batteries, more efficiency, improved insulation.

Some others: increase of heat pumps, energy poverty, reduction in industrial energy (both due to good and bad reasons)

Ultimately though, its not about how much energy per capita, its about the sources of energy, and how effectively they are used... my heat pump uses infinity more electricity than my boiler, but far more effectively uses the underlying energy source.

The incandescent to LED switch is a major factor, but most things have become more efficient, a Sky box uses 30x less power than the 90s.

I wonder if they're paying less than the 70s?

Isn't this a good thing? I mean, is there a direct correlation between electricity usage and country = better?

I mean, what do you expect out of a resource poor island? The only reason the UK was on the map is because it has intelligent, well spoken people that could make deals and exploit the resources of their colonies. That’s not enough when you don’t have colonies. It’s reverting to the mean.

If you import 12 million people in 20 years, your energy generation, water provision, and housing affordability are all going to fall off a cliff vs demand.

We may genuinely have the worst energy market in the developed world. It's going to get cheaper and reliable any day soon - George monbiot told me so it must be true.