Arthur Downing, author of Power and the People: A History of British Energy, says all-encompassing rapid transition will need a mutualised system

Have you ever wondered why it is that most houses in the UK are reliant on gas boilers? Not what’s stopping more people from replacing them with heat pumps, but instead why and how the gas boiler became so ubiquitous in the first place?

Arthur Downing, the author of the new book Power and the People: A History of British Energy, can tell you exactly why. “We only have boilers in our houses because of a state-owned enterprise that went into everybody’s home and installed natural gas-suitable appliances at no direct cost,” he says. The nationalised gas industry of the 1940s to the 1980s, which oversaw this huge project, was for three decades one of the “most dynamic, innovative, efficient industries in Britain”, Downing says. Yet few of us would use these terms to describe it as such now.

Savings grow as energy prices in Great Britain rise and cost of panel installation falls, analysis finds

Households in Great Britain’s cloudiest regions could still save more than £400 a year on their energy bills by installing rooftop solar panels, research has found.

Rising wholesale energy prices mean the potential savings from a home solar panel system have climbed in recent years, as the cost of installation has continued to fall, leading to increased demand.