Providers of municipal water supply services worldwide are facing pressure from climate change and increasing water demand due to growing populations and lifestyle changes. With finite global freshwater supplies, there is need for water service providers to consider water demand management as an option for closing the supply-demand gap. Several water utilities in the UK are implementing residential water efficiency initiatives, but to-date, the effectiveness of these programmes have not been comprehensively evaluated. The present study uses statistical analysis to evaluate the effectiveness of a domestic water efficiency programme, initiated by a major water supply company in South East England. Using multilevel regression, water consumption, weather and demographic data, the study analysed water savings achieved through the efficiency programme and defined the factors that affect a household’s potential to save water. Analysis showed that households that participated in the programme reduced their per capita consumption by approximately 15%. Importantly, research findings provide strong evidence that single resident and financially stretched households have a bigger potential to conserve water than wealthier and larger households do. This study also highlights the robustness of multilevel analysis, even in cases of data limitations. The findings generate implications for policy and practice, which are useful for water companies involved in implementing water efficiency programmes, as well as their evaluation.

In the upcoming years, as the population is growing and ageing, as lifestyle changes create the need for more water and as fewer people live in each household, the UK water sector will have to deal with challenges in the provision of adequate water services. Unless critical action is taken, every area in the UK may face a supply-demand gap by the 2080s. Extreme weather events and variations that alter drought and flood frequency add to these pressures and there is therefore a need to develop evidence-based drought scenarios models for water management purposes. However, little evidence is available about householders’ response to drought and there are few if any studies that have synthesised this evidence. In response, this paper discusses the current empirical literature on the factors driving domestic water consumption under both ‘normal’ and drought conditions. The paper identifies the limited availability of evidence on the many different and evolving factors affecting domestic consumption under both ‘normal’ and drought conditions and stresses the need for the inclusion of inter and intra household factors as well as water use practices in future demand forecasting models. The paper then presents ‘Water Cultures’ as an integrative modelling framework to combine the limited evidence that is available on the interactions of social norms, practices and material cultures. This enables the paper both to capture both the uncertainty and heterogeneity of individual and/or household level variation and also outline the research gaps that need to be addressed.

Shifting from heating using fossil fuel combustion to electrified heating, dominated by heat pumps, is central to many countries’ decarbonisation strategy. The consequent increase in electricity demand, combined with that from electric vehicles, and the shift from non-renewable to renewable generation requires increased demand flexibility to support system operation. Demand side response through interrupting heating during peak demands has been widely proposed and simulation modelling has been used to determine the technical potential. This paper proposes an empirical approach to quantifying a building’s potential to operate flexibly, presenting a metric based on measured temperature drop in a dwelling under standard conditions after heating is switched off, using smart meter and internal temperature data. A result was derived for 96% of 193 homes within a test dataset, mean temperature drop of 1.5 °C in 3 h at 15 °C inside-outside temperature differential. An empirical flexibility metric may support decision making and decarbonisation. For households it may support the transition to heat pumps, enabling time of use costs and tariffs to be better understood and system to be specified by installers. Electricity system stakeholders, such as aggregators and DNOs may use it to identify the potential for demand response, managing local networks, infrastructure and aggregation.

This paper presents preliminary results from the development of the IMPETUS model, a domestic water demand microsimulation model which was developed to estimate the results of a range of scenarios of domestic demand under drought conditions. The model is intended to enable water resource management practitioners to assess the likely impact of potential interventions in particular catchment areas. It has been designed to be driven by seasonal catchment level forecasts of potential hydrological droughts based on innovative climate and groundwater models. The current version of the model is driven by reconstructed historical drought data for the Colne catchment in the east of England from 1995 to 2014. This provides a framework of five drought phases (Normal, Developing, Drought, Severe Drought and Recovering) which are mapped to policy driven interventions such as increased provision of water efficiency technologies and temporary water-use bans. The model uses UK Census 2011 data to develop a synthetic household population that matches the socio-demographics of the catchment and it microsimulates (at the household level) the consequences of water efficiency interventions retrospectively (1995-2014). Demand estimates for reconstructed drought histories demonstrate that the model is able to adequately estimate end-use water consumption. Also, the potential value of the model in supporting cost-benefit analysis of specific interventions is illustrated. We conclude by discussing future directions for the work.