Energy consumption and health after the 2022 energy crisis

Research focus

This study uses the opportunity created by the 2022 energy price crisis to provide new evidence of the health impacts of improving home energy efficiency. We look at how energy consumption changed after the sudden increase in energy prices in 2022, and whether this had an impact on health outcomes. Evidence of the impact of changes in energy consumption from rising energy prices on health outcomes can be translated directly into understanding the effects that improved energy efficiency could have on health by reducing energy costs.

To do this, we link data from different sources:

• Information on properties – their energy efficiency and annual gas and electricity consumption
• Information on occupants – the number and ages, and their health conditions e.g. numbers of prescriptions related to respiratory conditions like asthma or hospital admissions for heart attacks
• Information on local weather

The objectives are:

• to develop measures of energy underconsumption from administrative data and analyse patterns of underconsumption pre- and post-crisis;
• to assess the impacts of the energy crisis on a range of adverse health outcomes, exploring overall impacts and variations across the population;
• to examine whether any increase in adverse health outcomes arose from increased energy underconsumption; and
• to draw conclusions on the impacts that higher energy efficiency could have on health outcomes and health service expenditures by reducing risks of energy underconsumption.

Data sources

Property-level

• Domestic Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) records.
• Annual Electricity and Gas Consumption, Scotland (AEGCS).

Individual-level

• Prescription Information Service (PIS) records.
• General/Acute Inpatient and Day Cases - Scottish Morbidity Record  (SMR01).
• Primacy Care Out of Hours service (PC OOH) records
• Scotland A&E dataset.
• Population Census 2022.

Area-level data

• Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).
• DEFRA Air Pollution data.
• CEDA Climate data.

Lookup

• CHI-UPRN Lookup (CURL).

Public and policy benefit

Cold, damp housing can have a number of harmful impacts on physical and mental health. Our evidence will quantify the health benefits which can be expected from improving energy efficiency, and therefore provide an additional incentive for Government to promote and encourage this kind of upgrading. Improving energy efficiency is also critical for achieving Net Zero goals.

Research team

Lead: Prof Nick Bailey

Prof Chris Dibben

Dr Caro Fyfe