Gas Prices - A Family History

I'm peeling away 110 years of interior decorating events in our home's main bedroom. At one point, the floor and walls were dark green, which may have seemed like a good idea at the time.  The locks on the door are were installed by someone with an unhealthy interest in privacy.  Maybe because of these locks, the door was once broken down, I suspect by a jealous lover.  Below the floorboards are three generations of electrical wiring and some plumbing described by a plumbers' merchant as "old school" which may have been installed in the 1970's.  Amongst the filth are the butts of a few "Woodies" and the remains of a fag packet.  The original fireplace was broken up with the skilled use of a 4lb club hammer and the hole blocked up. After a morning of bizarre behaviour I managed to recover a hand painted tile from the debris.  The piping for the original gas lighting appears to be more or less intact, although the fittings have long since disappeared.

There is a subtle harmony in the layout of the room. The bed was positioned to make the most of the early morning sun, the coal fire would have warmed the feet.  The gas lights on either side of the bed are perfectly placed for a book at bed time.  Maybe there was once a dressing table lit by the other gas light where the lady of the house did her makeup and needlework, a hint of her perfume remains.

Electricity was present in the house when it was completed in 1901, not for use as heat or light, but for signalling.  The three main bedrooms had bell pushes which probably connected to an indicator board in what was then the kitchen.  The house is neither large nor grand, but there may have been a live-in cook and this poor woman may have had to provide room service, but she did have the warmest room in the house to work in. The lead-acid batteries which powered this system would have been charged by one of the local shops.

The bedroom illustrates the roles of electricity, gas and coal in the Edwardian energy economy.  More than a century later we use these differently.   Gas is now the principal domestic fuel and its price is increasingly becoming a cause for concern.  The graph of domestic gas price below was compiled from from a collection of family documents:

This graph spans the period from 1928 to 2013.  I am attempting to fill in the gaps, but anecdotal evidence suggests that gas prices fell slowly in real terms during the period 1950 to 2000.

The conversion from money-of-the-day to 2011-money is based on the UK government's Composite Price Index, the attraction of this scheme being the availability of a long time series (one version extends back to 1750).

At the start of the 20th Century, gas was mainly used for lighting.  Coal was the principal domestic fuel for cooking and burning in open fires. The gas came from gas works, often located close to town centres and near a railway line. The economy of gas works was based on a combination of the sale of gas for lighting and coke for heating. By the 1920's gas stoves were rapidly replacing solid fuel ranges.  Simultaneously electricity was displacing gas as the energy source for lighting. Electricity was a much more versatile fuel than gas, it could be used for cooking, lighting, appliances and heating.  The relatively high cost of electricity limited the popularity of electric fires. By 1939, many houses were using electricity for lighting and appliances, gas for cooking and coal or coke for heating.

During the war years, domestic energy consumption declined. Coal was often difficult to obtain, the blackout discouraged the use of lighting and many men and women were away from home either working in the factories, on the land or serving in the forces.  After the war, the availability of energy for domestic consumption increased as war production ceased and the lights were turned on again and houses became warmer.

 In the 1950s, electricity was produced in increasingly larger power stations and distributed by a national grid. Gas was still produced and distributed locally, it was not until large volumes of natural gas were discovered in the Southern North Sea that a national gas distribution network was established.  The North Sea reserves stimulated a "dash-for-gas" and the role of gas in the energy economy changed significantly.

 By 1980 gas had more or less displaced coal as a domestic fuel. This transition was driven by a combination of low cost and convenience.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that domestic heating costs dropped with North Sea gas but there were two other driving forces.  Not least was the ease of  use. Whilst the occasional coal fire is pleasant, heating a house with coal is a labour intensive process requiring coal to be carried, grates to be cleaned and ash to be dumped. Also, for many years fog and smog in urban areas had been a public health problem and the advent of smokeless zones in towns discouraged the burning of coal.

The availability of low cost gas lead to its increased use as fuel for electricity generation.  By the beginning of the 20th century, the UK was ceasing to be self-sufficient in natural gas and imports either by pipeline from Europe or as LNG from the Arabian Gulf and elsewhere have been increasing.  The result of this is that the gas price is now set by international markets.