Insulate Britain (https://insulatebritain.com) is an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion which demanded that the British government fund insulation for all public housing by 2025, and, by the end of 2021, the government must create a plan to fund retrofitting of insulation of all homes in Britain by 2030. Someone estimated that it would cost £5 billion to insulate all public housing by 2025, which I’m sure was “too much” for conventional wisdom.
Insulate Britain demonstrated for these demands by blocking major highways around the UK, a dozen or more times, starting in September 2021 through February 2022 when the group announced “with a heavy heart” that the series of protests had failed in their aim to force the government into taking action. One poll from October 2021 showed that only 18% supported the protests while 72% of those surveyed opposed the protesters’ actions, with 10% that “did not know.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulate_Britain_protests
Energy prices are soaring in the UK and, according to columnist Caitlin Moran, “the present UK Energy Rebate Scheme will cost £9.1 billion for just one year”
Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/caitlin-moran-insulate-britain-conservative-party-energy-g78nbfcxm
https://twitter.com/CHeinemeyer/status/1569646532013465600
and the Guardian reports that
“UK must insulate homes or face a worse energy crisis in 2023, say experts
Cutting heat loss from houses will be more effective in the long term than subsidising bills, according to analysis”
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/sep/11/britain-insulate-homes-energy-crisis-2023-heat-loss-houses-subsidising-bills
Looks like Insulate Britain was offering a bargain.
Addendum: Other groups like Home Energy Efficiency Team [HEET] have done (and do) weatherization parties (https://heet.org/energy-efficiency/work-parties/) while back in the 1970s I was part of a group which did solar barnraisings (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu2RgqKQFgQ).
Incidentally, HEET has gone on to pioneer geothermal energy microgrids as a replacement for natural gas (https://heet.org/geogrid/).
There is such a thing as positive protest too.
