Spotted this today and thought it might be relevant to people on here. Still some questions over the methodology, but essentially the authors of a 2023 study have used overall UK gas network data to derive household usage, rather than extrapolation from a small sample set.

The results are over 50% lower than previous estimates, and should mean that concerns over increased peak load due to electrical heating may be unfounded. In other words it should be easier to transition away from gas for domestic space heating.

https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042%2823%2902316-7

Posted By: djhThe SE stands out as particularly greedy for some reason?

Population density certainly plays a big part but I suspect the age of the building stock may be the determining factor. Anyone got any studies on how this is distributed across the UK?

Or perhaps it's to do with which properties received gas in the big push to domestic roll out from 1930's-1950's. Perhaps London got theirs first, so now has the oldest and leakiest pipes? (similar to our tube network compared to other capital cities)