81: Swaffham Prior: Lessons from the UK's first rural heat network
In 2022, Swaffham Prior, a village in East Cambridgeshire, became the first village to develop a rural heat network. Before welcoming Emma Flether, who worked on this project and is now Low Carbon Homes Director at Octopus Energy, Becky and Fraser discuss what we can expect from fuel bills this winter, in the midst of plummeting UK temperatures.
Episode Transcript:
Matt: Hello, it’s Matt and Becky here from Local Zero. Just a quick note to say, before the episode starts, that from April 2024, Local Zero will be looking for some new funding to keep it going.
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Rebecca: So please help us continue the fight against climate change and bring local climate action to doorsteps across the world. Thanks for listening and now back to the pod.
[Music flourish]
Hello, and welcome to Local Zero with Fraser and Becky.
Fraser: Matt is on an important mission elsewhere for this episode but we’re delighted that Emma Fletcher, Director of Low Carbon Homes for Octopus, is joining us today to discuss her work and other work she’s done in more detail.
Rebecca: Yes, in 2022, Swaffham Prior became the first village to develop a rural heat network and Emma’s work in this project helped prove that things like this really can be done. Today, we explore some of the challenges and opportunities of implementing schemes like this across the UK and we’ll talk about the role of communities, local government, the private sector and companies like Octopus.
[Music flourish]
Fraser: But before we start today’s episode, as always, a reminder to make sure that you’ve subscribed to Local Zero wherever you get your podcasts, check out our website LocalZeroPod.com and follow us on X (Twitter) @LocalZeroPod.
Now I don’t know about you down in Cornwall, Becky, but certainly up in Scotland, temperatures have absolutely plummeted this week. How has it been feeling for yourself?
Rebecca: It got cold! I had to put trousers on for the first time in ages [laughter]. I’m not in my flip-flops anymore.
Fraser: You do wear alternatives if you wear something [laughter].
Rebecca: I wear shorts, Fraser. I’ve been in my denim shorts almost all the summer and my flip-flops and now I’m in my trousers and my hiking boots. It’s an unhappy state of affairs [laughter].
Fraser: Wow! Yeah, you can tell you live a lot further south than I do. I’ve just moved from regular trousers to highly insulated ones with Long Johns [laughter]. Fabric first – that’s the approach.
Rebecca: Very true [laughter] but it’s definitely got me thinking about all things heating. We got our heat pump back in March/April earlier this year and we’ve not really had to test it yet so we’re getting a little bit nervous as it’s starting to cool down. Yeah, very much heating is front of mind at the moment.
Fraser: That’s an exciting time I think. We’ve been having the heating on for about a month or so now which, to be fair, we did just bring a new baby home and we have to keep things cosy in the house. We definitely need the heat just now but we are on an oil boiler because we’re out in the sticks in a very, very old house. We’ve been looking at trying to get it switched over, ideally, to a heat pump but we’re one of those houses that we keep getting told that the radiators aren’t right and the pipes are not right for it which, given the age of our house, means it probably isn’t just one of those things that is actually wrong in the assumption. There’s probably a bit of work to do. However, the quotes that we’ve had for heat pumps have been outrageous.
Rebecca: How much do they want from you? I want to know.
Fraser: We’ve had quotes from a couple of companies but the most jarring quote that we got in total was £22,000.
Rebecca: Wow!
Fraser: That’s heat pump plus resizing radiators, pipes and all that kind of stuff as well which, after the uplift that you get from the Scottish Government for being off the gas grid, would leave us with still about £11,000 to pay out of our own pockets...
Rebecca: Wow!
Fraser: ...which is quite steep.
Rebecca: Yeah, and it really does have you questioning how on earth we’re going to see all homes in the UK make this transition when we don’t have support mechanisms that make it... not even attractive for someone but feasible – just purely feasible. It just feels like this is so far beyond reach. Actually, Fraser, my head has very much been in this space because the government has been running a consultation recently about proposed changes to the Boiler Upgrade Scheme and one of the questions in there was should the level of support be different depending on your socio-economic status. Actually, sorry, the question was whether it should vary and our response was definitely, yes, there are some very important socio-economic factors to consider but also property factors. You’re just making that case in point very, very well.
Fraser: Yeah, it’s such an important thing as you’re designing these kinds of grants and subsidies which are really, really effective at getting people to uptake technologies or typically really effective. We’ve highlighted before, Becky, on the podcast that you run into those issues of one size will never fit all on this. You need to be thinking along more tailored lines, especially when we’re at that kind of cost. The other bit of insight from this, which I thought was interesting, was that we had a couple of different engineers and different companies come in and talk to us about it. Out of the two or three that we have spoken to and a couple we’ve spoken to separately, the willingness and enthusiasm for heat pumps at that level still varies massively. I don’t think there’s full industrial buy-in to that transition yet which is an issue that we’re going to have to overcome to get this done. You want engineers to be, as far as possible... never to the detriment of anyone but you want upselling to be happening to some degree. You want this to be something that they’re confident in to give other people confidence. We’re just not quite there yet I don’t think on the ground. I don’t know what your experience was like, Becky.
Rebecca: I had a similar experience to you, Fraser, in that we had a few people come in and do some quotes. Certainly, when folk came from organisations that did heat pumps and boilers, their recommendation was just to replace it like for like. We ended up going with a renewables-only company that specialised in not just heat pumps but also solar, storage and all those sorts of things. We ended up going with that company. There was very mixed messaging that we got from across the industry. I’m working on a project right now looking at the retrofit supply chain and one of the things that I learnt this week was that a lot of these manufacturers and boiler manufacturers have loyalty schemes for the industry. So you’re also working against this kind of in-built incentive [laughter] to put in these boilers. I think it’s a really, really challenging environment, particularly when most people won’t know much about heat pumps. Probably, if they’re following the news, they might hear some positive stuff and they’ll probably also hear some negative stuff and, of course, the ongoing debate about hydrogen that is very much still in the media and social media as an alternative. I think it’s a very confusing environment and we really need to see that buy-in more broadly across the industry. It’s probably not helped by what feels like a lack of government standing behind energy efficiency.
Fraser: Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that it’s that wider piece and this is something that we’ve shouted about for so long. I know a lot of our listeners are involved in the energy policy space often in spite of what feels like considerable resistance a lot of the time at the government level but something we’ve said for so long is about that grand leadership and governing vision that says, ‘Here’s where we want to get to. Here are the things that we’re going to support to get there.’ Even just that message is an effective kick-start right across that industry so everyone knows what they’re working towards. So a few weeks ago, when we had Rishi Sunak rolling back on a couple of net-zero commitments, it might not damage our ability to reach net zero by 2050 overall and the CCC (Climate Change Committee) made that analysis recently as well – I think Chris Stark made that analysis last week – but if you don’t have that commitment and it’s clear, confident and well-articulated, then you are going to end up with that kind of... it’s not disagreement but those different perspectives and ideas of what’s supposed to be happening. None of that, of course, is helped by the compounding cost of electricity today as well and our seeming inability to address that which is another thing that we’re working on a bit in our day jobs, when we’re not galvanting on podcasts [laughter], to try and align those factors a little bit so that we all know we’re in the same direction of travel and everyone knows the way that we’re heading to bring down costs and bring benefits to people and places as far as we possibly can.
Rebecca: Yeah, it’s a really challenging space. In some ways, I feel like that lack of vision and leadership from our national government is putting even more onus on local authorities and communities, particularly, to be a driving force. We’re seeing a lot of exciting and interesting community action in this space. I think, for me, one of the big challenges that raises is one of equity because I think it’s really exciting and brilliant when you do have those community support schemes and even community heat projects but a lot of that relies on voluntary action. It relies on having the right people in the community who spearhead all of that. I think that’s really, really cool but we’ve got to make sure that that doesn’t just stay in its little niche and we end up then with potentially people who live in communities that don’t have that resourcing or capacity getting left behind and potentially paying for things that they just really, really can’t afford.
Fraser: Yeah, and we’re seeing that more and more, in separate work and people we’ve had on this podcast such as the guest that we have in today who we’ll bring in shortly, examples of those types of projects where communities, again, often in spite of quite challenging policy and regulatory circumstances, are making these kinds of things happen with a bit more support and appreciation of the role that communities and local places have to play. They absolutely have to play a role in this transition. I think we could see something really big and quite special happening. I think on that note, Becky, it might be the perfect segue to bring in our guest.
Rebecca: Absolutely. Let’s bring her in.
Emma: Hello, my name is Emma Fletcher and I am the Low Carbon Homes Director at Octopus Energy.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: Welcome to the show, Emma, and what a brilliant job title that is. I know that you come into your current role with over a decade of experience working in this space, not least with the stuff that you’ve done in Swaffham Prior. I’m wondering if maybe to get us kicked off you could just tell us a little bit more about yourself. How did you even get into working in this area in the first place? What was driving you to all of this work that you’ve been doing?
Emma: I don’t think anybody naturally finds themselves here but it was one of those evolutionary-type scenarios. I was on maternity leave and I was pushing the pram around our village and I thought, ‘Where are all the young people in the village?’ Roll the clock forward, I set up a community land trust and I decided to build eight homes for the village all on air-source heat pumps, I hasten to add ten years ago [laughter]. After I’d built these homes, I thought, ‘I’ve got a company. What else can I do with a community company that could work for the village?’ I just hated oil. I really hated oil. I hated oil deliveries. I was that person playing the mum card and ringing up begging for oil when my oil tank had run dry. You can’t budget. You have to pay by direct debit. I hated oil and I just thought, ‘We’ve got to change this. We have to be able to change this.’ I happened to hear a podcast on Radio 4 about the Isle of Eigg in Scotland and how a guy retired there and he took them onto renewable electricity. I thought, ‘You know what? If we treat our village like an island, we may just have a crack at doing something.’ Basically, that’s how the energy project started.
Rebecca: Wow! That’s really amazing. I love that you were inspired by listening to a podcast. It makes me feel very excited about what we do, Fraser, and maybe getting some more inspiration out there [laughter]. You said you’d never really interacted with heat pumps before. Was this all quite a new space to you? You said you’d been involved in a land trust but never really in the energy space.
Emma: The day job was working in construction and designing homes, building homes and we built homes to some fairly high standards but mainly, dare I say it, for the affordable housing market which has always been there pushing the boundaries. I’d wanted to make sure that with the homes we were building for the villages, those people didn’t have to be on oil. We went down the air-source heat pump route and put solar on the roofs. We were ahead of our time then but probably didn’t think so. I kept looking at stuff in Germany or, in particular, Finland, Sweden and Denmark and I kept thinking, ‘We’re not new. We’re not innovative. We’re behind the curve. We’re seriously behind the curve.’ So I learnt stuff through the day job but I wasn’t seeing it mainstream in the private homes. I was seeing it in the affordable homes. But I’m quite a stubborn person I guess and I thought, ‘There must be a better way of doing it. There must be a way that we could help people and also decarbonise at the same time.’ Fuel poverty seven or eight years ago was a thing as it is now, especially for oil communities and then over time, it’s been a sustainability thing for different people. Actually, once you get into this space, you do become a bit of a geek. You have to hold yourself back a little bit [laughter] because you can get into it and go down rabbit holes a bit but then you find other people and they give you inspiration and you push yourself on. You can always be doing more and there’s always a better idea out there. Unashamedly, we have taken ideas from other places, mashed them together and created something for our village. The delight is we’re inspiring other villages to go and look at doing the same and that’s where the pleasure comes.
Fraser: I think that’s amazing and I think that sentiment, Emma, that a lot of these things already work really, really well in other places is something that we don’t give enough credit to. When we’re trying to come up with new projects and new ideas, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel all the time. In saying that, on that project, something our listeners are intensely obsessed with are the practicalities of it. I was wondering if you could talk us through a little bit about what the actual process is in terms of setting up the company and working with people locally. What does the process look like for getting a project like this off the ground?
Emma: So for somebody like me who likes to go from A to G as quickly as possible, irritating baby steps is the honest answer [laughter]. I just happened to be talking to a guy who said, ‘I worked for a Danish company ten years ago trying to bring this to the UK.’ It’s not like people hadn’t tried before. Danes have been coming over here... not quite the invasion of the Vikings but they have been trying to bring their technology over [laughter] to help us. We just got chatting and we went and got our first grant. That was an amazing opportunity because the first grant that we got... these funds are still available and the government have just opened that fund up again. They’ve made it less about rural and more about communities anywhere. For small amounts of money, we’re talking £20-30,000, a full 100% grant, you can take that and start the gem of an idea. That is doing surveys around your village to see who is interested. That’s talking to local authorities or land owners about land if you want to put an energy centre somewhere and, dare I say it, just getting basic information together like what your options are. We came out with this options report and Mike and I had always decided that there would be no barriers to entry and that everybody in the village should be able to join – big criteria. We decided it would be the same price if not cheaper than oil because we had to convince people to come onto this and actually, we didn’t want to be burning anything. If we’re really selfish, probably as a fourth point, neither of us wanted to be collecting anything, opening gates, shovelling woodchips and doing something in our spare time because we were busy at the time with young families. It had to be easy for us to do. That one grant then just opened up a whole series of further grants. We had to dovetail alongside the county council but it happened that they were a landowner in the village as well. That’s where we formed this coalition between, dare I say it, the community and a public body and then we bid for lots of different series of grants. We never thought we were going to be successful but every time we got another grant, we said, ‘Let’s do a trial borehole. Let’s do some more community consultation. Let’s do another event.’ That has just been the way we’ve gone forward all the way along. Secure the grant funding and then actually move it to the next stage. Weirdly, Covid was our friend because at a time when we needed to work out basic things like what boiler have you got in your house? How much oil do you use? How much heat do we need to produce for your home? When everybody was at home – wow! – people were so excited about doing a Zoom call and showing us their boiler. So take advantage of the situation you’ve got and max it really.
Rebecca: I love the story that it started as an idea and I love that it’s developed into this partnership and working with the council. Certainly, some of the stuff we’ve talked about on prior Local Zero pods has been the importance of the local authority in a lot of the work that is going on in this space alongside those community organisations. Who else needed to be involved really to get this off the ground? Have you seen others joining in as you’ve been driving it forward and how important has it been to bring the private sector along with you as well?
Emma: Without a shadow of a doubt, this project is not just about one person or even a small group of people. This is a project that has taken hundreds of different people at different stages to get to where we are now. In terms of the private sector, we appointed our own consultants in the first round of the report, Bioregional, who did a fantastic job but as soon as we dovetailed with the council, then you get into more of the public sector frameworks. Therefore, we had to use their framework and we started partnering with Bouygues Energies & Services which is massive in France and no one had ever heard of them in England. In fact, they’re international. They came along and they have effectively worked alongside us to design, build and will now, ongoingly, run the energy centre. That’s been really important because when you’re on the hook to actually run it, you’re going to design it well. All the way along, it’s been an iterative process. We’ve been quite cheeky as a community as well. We started off as being a low-carbon system and then when we thought, ‘We’re getting somewhere,’ we tried to get it to a net-zero carbon system or at least completely off fossil fuels. That has pushed the engineers out of their comfort zone but actually, I think a bit of commercial realisation from a private body as well as a community pushing harder has been the success of the project. We know when to push a bit harder and tell the engineers that they’re being over-cautious and factoring in a bit too much contingency. At the same time, they’ve held us back and said, ‘We’ve got to lose this battle to win the war.’ A healthy balance and a good dose of realism help with the community which is quite ambitious.
[Music flourish]
Rebecca: Reflecting back on what Fraser was asking about before regarding some of those practicalities, along the journey that you’ve been on over the past... is it eight years now?
Emma: It probably is eight years, yeah [laughter].
Rebecca: Have you experienced any major challenges in doing this? What have been some of those hiccups that you’ve encountered and how did you deal with them?
Emma: Change is a really scary thing and so being labelled as a first-of-its-kind project is sometimes helpful but sometimes can be unhelpful. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we roll out societal change on a scale and probably the biggest change, looking backwards, was the rollout of gas. Actually, people were living in homes without central heating and so, of course, they were very welcoming of having gas in their homes and, similarly in our village, oil in their homes because it made their lives better. So trying to tell them to change when they’ve already got it good is actually quite hard. Trying to convince people to do something that, in their mind, is the guinea pig project or doing something new is quite challenging and, no joke, we have had to win people over on almost a woman-by-woman and man-by-man type of basis going forward. We’ve wheeled this heat interface unit that goes on the wall of the house literally around in a festival trolley to show people and say, ‘You get rid of your oil tank, you get rid of your oil boiler and this tiny box basically sits in your house instead. Isn’t this amazing?’ We’ve spoken to people about their energy bills. We found it really hard to get in front of the housing associations to start off with. They should be the ones that were desperate but the way they’re structured, their sustainability lead is in a head office elsewhere and then it comes down to a local person on the ground who is overstretched, overworked and they’ve got to communicate yet another thing to their tenants about what they would like to do. It’s hard. Time is hard to find for people. How do you communicate with people in a village? Yes, there are some people on the Facebook page, other people read the village magazine, some people don’t read any of it and so communication really suddenly stood out. Weirdly, Mike and I, as a community group and the rest of the community land trust really realised quite early on that we needed even basic things like a logo and a website. You might be Mike and Emma who go down to the pub or whatever but people think, ‘What the hell do they know about all this?’ So, weirdly, a logo and a website made us look professional and actually legitimate. That’s one of the first things I always say to people. Look professional. Get your Comms sorted. Get your communication strategy right. For you guys, as podcasters, this is right up your street. That’s exactly what you do but, dare I say it, to us normal folk who don’t always think about these things every day, that became really important. There are a lot of people out there that don’t want to change and use climate change as an issue so that can be a problem. There are also people who are just getting on with their lives. They have awful things happening in their lives and they just need to sort it out. They’re too old and they think they’re going to die before they need to change... possibly not but statistically, people live quite a long time in our village or they’re thinking of moving house. Dare I say it, there is nearly always a reason why not to do something. It’s much easier to justify why not rather than to just do it. Therefore, it was about encouraging people, showing them their neighbours were signing and that they should join in. There were a few things like the oil boiler ban in 2026. I know that’s moved out now but at the time, that was a genuinely live threat and what you were going to do to your house. The joy of this system is that it was designed so that every house could join. Every home can join and you don’t have to do any major changes to your house. You’re not going to have to pay for it upfront. The project will pay for it over the whole length of the time. All you’ve got to do is just sign a bit of paper saying yes and we’ll come in and do the rest. That’s been a real learning curve. Make it easy for people like a one-stop shop. Also, like the wheelie bin, in our village, if you put your wheelie bin out before 6 o’clock in the evening before bin day, blimey, you get some stiff stares in the village. If you’ve kept it out there after midday, those dog walkers can be harsh and they stare and glare at you. There’s no rule but, actually, you do it and that’s the sort of neighbourhood criteria on this – ‘Oh, my neighbour has joined. I probably should do it.’ It’s that societal... ‘Oh, I’ve got to change.’ That’s been really important but you’re never going to win everybody over. What I’ve learnt is if at least 50% of the people back you, you’re pretty much onto the right thing. The crazier the crazies get, actually, you’re pretty much onto the right thing as well because the more extreme their reasons for why you shouldn’t be doing it, you know you’re getting under their skin and that kind of drives you forward.
Fraser: I really like that framing of it. On the podcast, we positively talk a lot about community action and it can often sound very romantic and rose-tinted but the grind of it is very, very real. The issues are very, very real as well and it’s not always this shiny inspirational thing. One of the principles you mentioned, Emma, was that anyone can get involved and also the fact that a lot of people are just trying to get by and that’s fine. Against the backdrop of the last couple of years with rising energy prices, how effective has the project been in protecting people from that or otherwise? Have there been advantages to being a part of the project through that crisis?
Emma: Without a shadow of a doubt. We were challenged with fuel poverty before any of these crises hit. We were totally challenged. When you bring in energy prices and electricity prices as well, for oil communities, they’re doubly hit. Goodness, the oil price went literally crazy and went up to £1.30 per litre at one point. When I first moved into the village, I think I was paying 19p per litre. The average has been about 70p per litre. At £1.30 or £1.40, that is crippling for people who have to go and fill a whole tank up with oil. These pressures on people have seen more people come to the project. We have more people sign up all of a sudden and then also what’s been really interesting is that, especially now we’ve got people on and it’s been proven and even now we’re charging £1,000 to join late, we have had so many people now join up. What it’s taught me is that if you’ve got a good idea, you believe in it, you’ve got some early adopters who back you up and you’re not totally on your own and really crazy, actually, the people will come. It’s just that some people take a lot longer to come. They need to know it works, they need to be happy it’s working and that there’s somebody they trust in our setting who has got it and it works. Really boringly, you just turn on the tap and, guess what, hot water comes out. It’s not the most exciting moment and the success is hot water but, to be honest, if they turned on the tap and cold water came out, we would know about it. Let’s take the wins! The hot water is working, the central heating is working and now we are seeing so many people coming forward to a point that we’ve put a halt on the project installing now. We’ve got a big event this week to bring more people on board so we can actually then regroup and put people into relevant clusters to come back around and do the installs beginning early next year. I don’t want to say it’s been a good thing that there has been an energy crisis for the project because that isn’t the case. It’s a terribly sad thing but actually, in a point of crisis, we’ve given people options to do something right, to lower their bills and actually protect the village in the long-term in terms of our wider community aspects. We’ve got to make sure young people want to keep living in our village. We’ve got to make sure our vulnerable are warm. We’ve got to make sure that the older people in our village also realise that they have to invest in their housing stock too. On every level, the project has achieved a lot more than we ever anticipated.
Rebecca: Just to shift the conversation a little bit, you’ve taken up the role of Low Carbon Homes Director at Octopus. Do you feel like you’ve been able to bring some of these learnings from Swaffham Prior into your new role? Maybe you could just tell us a little bit more about what you’re trying to do now and whether you have similar ambitions.
Emma: What it does combine is 25 years of construction and development knowledge from the day job. It combines what I’ve learnt not from the day job but in the village. It’s brought into focus something that I love doing which is helping people change and also maybe answering questions or achieving things that haven’t been done before. Having a personal ambition to want to change things quicker and faster, as I said, going from A to G, Octopus has given me that ability to take everything fantastic that they were already doing and actually roll it out for people that I know in the industry who wanted to do something but didn’t know how and talk to communities that have been struggling to maybe get some influence or get some traction going forward on their projects. Also, it’s just about influencing the wider professional bodies as well like architects, lawyers and all those other people who are out there in the ecosystem so they can be advising their clients. We are agnostic at the end of the day. We’re a data company. We have amazing tariffs. We can also come out and install your equipment like solar and air-source heat pumps. We can come and do that but we’re never going to do every install in the country. We just need to encourage people to do more. What I’ve loved at Octopus is the amount of people who just want to do things, get on and do it and do the best for the customers. That is totally where the village project came from and literally, totally where I want to be. We’re having amazing conversations. We have life-changing technologies in our zero bills proposition especially for those in affordable homes to be able to move into a home and not have to pay an electricity bill for five years. You can keep the heat on over winter, you can cook for your kids, you can run the washing machine to clean the kids’ clothes and uniform so they can go to school, your uniform for work and just live in the house like you should do which is phenomenal. It’s an amazing achievement by some really clever people who, just through flexing when you export or generate power, have created this environment to remove bills. In the new builds we’ve got that but the real nut to crack is now in retrofit and to actually encourage those people who have already got homes to change and they can see benefits from it as well. That’s what I love: taking everything that we’re doing, rolling it all up and utilising different parts of the Octoverse for different things and different positive outcomes.
Rebecca: Like you, I see one of the biggest challenges that we’re facing over the next decade and probably longer is going to be around the retrofit side of things. We’re not just talking about swapping out your gas boiler or your oil heating system for cleaner technology. We’re also talking about things fundamental to your home in and of itself. We’re talking about energy efficiency. We’re talking about upgrades and the sheer number of stakeholders involved in this space. Where and how are you taking action to try and address what? What’s top on your priority list to try and do something about this space?
Emma: It’s not as easy as just swapping out a gas boiler. Weirdly, that’s exactly where we’re trying to get to and exactly where we’re getting to with our air-source heat pump. The Cosy 6, which is coming through the system, is currently in manufacture and is a high-temperature air-source heat pump. It is designed to be exactly as good as your gas boiler in terms of performance but what we’ve been working really hard on is making the installation costs similar to a gas boiler. We’ve worked out that we can get an installation pretty much now for free for people under the government grant. When it was at £5,000, we were getting there but now at £7,500, we know we can. We’ve seen huge amounts of uptake literally in the last couple of weeks from customers and not even customers ringing up for installs which is phenomenal. So despite everything that’s going on in the world, we know that customers want something that is as good as the gas boiler which can be rolled out. The real secret will be over this winter and the challenge I put out there to all air-source heat pump installers is when the boiler goes wrong, it’s normally the deepest, darkest point of winter. It’s the coldest and the bleakest point. We’ve got to be able to respond as an industry for a 48-hour install. That is something we need to get behind because otherwise, people are just going to swap out for gas as it will be quicker and easier. They can just do it. In terms of actually encouraging people to go ahead and move on, it’s carrot and stick. We need both. I think, actually, it’s about education and talking at people’s level and not on a high-geek level. We need to show people this is what you do and also not penalise people for not doing everything on day one. One of the things with the heating project is that we’ve put the heating project in now and then you’ve got time to do your double glazing. You’ve got time to do some solar. You’ve got time to do some loft insulation because it works with your house now. If we can swap in a high-temperature heat pump, that’s like your gas boiler now and as and when you’ve got some more money, you’ve saved up something, there’s a new government grant or a new programme comes in, then you can look at all the other bits of your property. For most people, as you quite rightly say, ripping everything off the wall, installing internal wall insulation, rehanging radiators and redecorating your house which might involve rewiring is a big proposition for so many homes. It’s totally unrealistic. For those in the social housing sector, they are trying really hard. They are doing as much as they can as possible but for those in the private market, I think for the majority of problems with all the cost of living crises, you’ve just got to do the best you can do as quickly as you can but we’re there to help. We’re there to help with tariffs as well to help bring the cost of some of this new technology down with specific tariffs for air-source, solar or electric cars but we just need to make it easy for people: easy to understand, easy to know what’s right for your home and also take people on a bit of a journey.
Fraser: This is a big question that we ask and we’ve asked it a few times on this podcast about the private sector, particularly people who are on lower incomes and if they’re living in rented accommodation or whatever it might be and how you support those people to transition. I think even maybe a level below that, more foundationally, it sounds like the work that Octopus is doing... there’s a lot on tariffs there and a lot of very smart things with tariffs but when you talk about the affordable housing programme and effectively neutralising bills over long periods of time, do we need a wider mindset shift away from tariff offerings and purely cost/market type things? Are we thinking more now about services? Are we thinking more now about a journey rather than just a product?
Emma: Yeah, I think that’s the right way to look at it. There are always going to be political cycles and there are going to be different needs but the one thing that everybody is agreed on is 2050. If we start with 2050 and work backwards, we’re all going to have to do certain things at certain points. You can either do it straightaway, you could leap every five years or you could do something when there’s a change in your personal circumstances. Pulling it all the way back, you need to know what is the best your house, your property or your flat can be. You need to know what you could do that makes it the very best... not quite if money was no object but what is the best and most efficient way of getting your house the best it can be. I think that’s going to be really important over the next five years is how we help people understand that and not just the EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) but what you can do that is cost-effective as well as getting towards carbon zero. We treat our customers as our customers and, therefore, we have extra help. We have home helpers to come out and help you with this technology because once you’ve installed it, you’ve still got to run it and understand how to run it. We’ve also got people in our Customer Service Team who are social workers and they really get vulnerable customers and can help them. If you’ve got a vulnerable parent or a vulnerable adult/child and you need some help, we can have a second person named on a bill so you can be the named person to help out. Also, once you’ve got a smart meter and you’ve got smart technology installed, we can actually take control of the systems as well so that you can just live your life and if it’s not playing ball, we will know. We will know through our data that something is not right, be it that the air-source heat pump is not running correctly or there is some problem with the solar. Weirdly, being a data company, once we have that data, we can actually assist in how we manage these things going forward. Again, it’s about making it easy, understanding your customer and talking in a language that people understand but that needs to come from everywhere. There are still reports coming out of the government that say, ‘We’re going to reduce things like high-carbon home fuelling,’ or something along those lines but you don’t describe your oil as high-carbon fuel or your LPG gas bottle. So no one thinks, ‘It doesn’t relate to me because that’s high carbon,’ but, of course, it is but we’ve got to change the language in which we talk and I think that’s going to be really important too.
Rebecca: You’re right. It can be a very scary proposition and a very confusing proposition; the switch that folk are embarking on. I’m kicking myself and thinking, ‘Why did we get a heat pump back in March rather than now with all the changes going on.’ I then remind myself, ‘Yes, it’s because my heating system broke and we needed something.’ I work in this space and I found it very confusing and challenging to find the right companies and find the right developers to help me on that journey. Do you see Octopus as bridging that gap, joining the dots for a lot of people and bringing that supply chain directly to customers? Are you positioning in that role where you can help navigate that journey for a lot of folk?
Emma: All the way through my career, I’ve always said that there has to be an element of fun. Whatever you’re doing, there has to be an element of fun. I once spoke to an architect and he said, ‘I talk about passion,’ and he did it much better than me but that’s what we bring. We bring passion and understanding to this sector. The Octopus is there so people see the brand and they know what they’re going to get. The brand and the Octopus stand for customer quality and it stands for us doing the right thing. I think that is going to be the most important thing for us going forward and it’s often something said to us which is, ‘Can you keep this up as you’re scaling up?’ The honest answer is yes we can because of the way that we grow, the passion that we’ve got and the people around us, we are so customer-focused on doing the right thing that people always want to go that extra mile and help people. All of the people in our call centres are trained so that you’re not pushed from pillar to post. They understand the whole system. It’s the most amazing induction I’ve ever been on in terms of understanding how a company operates and all the things we offer. When you ring up, you get a person and when you email in, you get a person in response so that you actually have somebody to talk to. To date, that’s been our spidey sense. That’s been our secret sauce and I think going forward, that is the thing that people are going to need more and more and we’re here willing to do that. Sure, our competitors are going to chase behind us wanting to do that as well. That’s great because the market needed to get ahead and be following us. The more people who are doing stuff better, the quicker we can go on this transition. The more people who are with other service providers changing means there are more people in the community who are making a change which means there are more neighbours taking a look and thinking, ‘My neighbour has got solar panels. I need solar panels on my house.’ This is not a one-stop shop. We cannot be the answer to all the problems as one company but we can inspire a group of people to do things better and we can inspire other companies to chase us and do things better. Guess what? That keeps us fresh. That keeps us pushing forward, driving forward and wanting to be ahead of the game which can only be a good thing.
Fraser: Just wrapping it back around effectively to where we started off on the local level and the community level, as someone who has now worked right across from community up to this higher level innovation and pushing the boundaries of what it is that we’re doing, what would you have to say to anyone listening to this podcast just now who is thinking, ‘I’d love to get out and start something here and change something here?’ What’s your one big plea to anyone who has that mindset just now?
Emma: For fear of reprisals, and I’m sure somebody has already done this already, just do it! Literally, just do it. Get out there and find other people who can support you on your journey that can help you when things get down and say, ‘No, you’re doing the right thing. Carry on.’ Hunt out and always follow things like grants, money and assistance. One of the great things we have at Octopus is we have a 50/50 joint venture with the Co-op called Unity that helps out with small grants and loans and with community-based projects. They’re there to help. We, as Octopus, are here to help as well. There are some great people out there in the net-zero energy hubs who can help direct you towards grants. Don’t hesitate, don’t think about it but just think, ‘Would it be good for me? Would it be good for my community?’ and then just focus on that end goal. Lose some battles to win the war but literally, target where you want to get to and die trying [laughter] because, actually, you know you’re doing the right thing for you and others around you will think the same.
Rebecca: [Laughter] Brilliant. Thank you so much, Emma. This has been a really inspiring conversation and also just fantastic to hear not just what you’ve done in your own life but also what you’re doing moving forward now with Octopus. Thank you so much for joining us.
Emma: Thank you for having me.
Fraser: You’ve been listening to Local Zero. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please do suggest us to people you think might like it as word of mouth is absolutely the number one way to increase our audience.
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Rebecca: And one final plea, please do get in touch with us and tell us why you enjoy Local Zero and how you’ve used it in your work as we strive to secure funding to keep everybody’s favourite local climate action pod going into the future but for now, thank you and goodbye.
Fraser: Bye, bye, bye.
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Transcribed by
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