The impact of public health measures on household energy consumption: The case of the UK COVID-19 tier

Substantial attention has been paid to household energy consumption during COVID-19 lockdowns, however, there exists a dearth of studies on the impact of more granular health restrictions; understanding the consequences of differentiated health measures is important for policymakers and grid operators alike. We investigate the marginal impact of additional restrictions by studying the COVID-19 tier system of the UK. Each additional tier tightened applicable rules and imposed more restrictions to many aspects of life, such as the types of social interactions that were permissible and which stores were allowed to operate. We use the novel vector matching method, which enables causal identification of treatment effects in cases of multiple ordinal treatments. Our results indicate that moving from a low-restrictions environment to a medium and high restriction environment increased electricity consumption by 18% to 45%, respectively. These increases in consumption manifest predominantly between 9AM to 5PM, even when remaining home is not required by the measures in place. The changes in behaviour resulting from additional restrictions would amount to 0.57 pound/day (+18%) + 18%) and 1.41 pound/day (+45%) + 45%) when transitioning from low to medium and high restrictions, respectively.