Cold and expensive v hot , cheap and eco - friendly : the contrasting histories of home heating in the united kingdom and Sweden

theconversation.com · Feb 16, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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The new year in Sweden began with some record-breaking cold temperatures. Temperatures in the village of Kvikkjokk in the northern Swedish part of Lapland dropped to -43.6°C, the lowest recorded since records began in 1887. Yet for the majority of Swedish households, heating is not an issue. Those living in the multi-household apartment blocks that characterise Sweden’s towns and cities enjoy average temperatures of 22°C inside their homes, thanks to communal heating systems that keep room temperatures high and costs low. For many households, heating is charged at a flat rate and included in the rent they pay. *Some interviewees in this article are anonymised according to the terms of the research. In the UK, meanwhile, home temperatures average just 16.6 degrees, the lowest in all of Europe. At least 6 million UK households fear the onset of cold weather because they are living in fuel poverty – unable to afford to heat their home to a safe and comfortable level. The problem is exacerbated by the UK’s reliance on natural gas to heat its homes – a fuel which suffers from escalating price volatility. They are also the most poorly insulated in Europe, making them difficult to keep warm. In Britain, home heating isn’t just a political hot potato; it has been shown to cost lives. In the winter of 2022-23, 4,950 people were estimated to have died earlier than expected (known as “excess winter deaths”) because of the health effects of living in cold homes – including lung and heart problems as well as damage to mental health. In contrast, despite having a much colder winter climate, Sweden’s excess winter deaths index was around 12%, one of the lowest rates in Europe and considerably below the UK’s 18% figure. The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges. So how did two countries that are geographically quite close end up so far apart when it comes to home heating outcomes? As two professors of energy studies – one British, the other Swedish – we have long puzzled over the stark contrast in how winter is experienced inside our homes in the north of England (Sheffield) and southern Sweden (Lund). For the last three years, we have been researching the modern histories of home heating in both countries (plus Finland and Romania), gathering nearly 300 oral accounts of people’s memories of the daily struggle to keep warm at home for long periods each year. By charting these experiences of home heating in both countries since the end of the second world war, we show how Britain now finds itself struggling to keep its citizens warm in winter while also facing an uphill battle to meet its environmental targets. The stories from Sweden, on the whole, suggest how different things could have been. Post-war memories The second world war changed many things but not, immediately, the way homes were heated. In the UK coal remained the primary domestic fuel, while Sweden stuck mainly with wood, although coal was becoming more common in cities. Cold homes were still considered normal in both countries, as Majvor* (who is now in her 80s and lives in the Swedish city of Malmö) recalled of her post-war childhood living in a one-room flat: There was a stove in the room and that was the only source of heat – I have a memory of it being so cold in the winter that my mother had to put all three children in the same bed to keep warm. In the winter, all the water froze to ice, so you had to … heat it on the stove to get hot water. Despite the cold, many of our interviewees remembered the burning of wood and coal to heat their homes with great affection – although less so the drudgery and dirt that went with it. “There’s just something about a fire, isn’t there,” Sue (now in her 60s and living in Rotherham, England) told us. “The warmth, the smell, the laughter. It’s that family memory and it was just wonderful. Anyone ’round here will tell you the same: life was hard but it was wonderful. We felt loved.” Building a wood fire in London in 1943, when coal was saved for Britain’s war factories. Associated Press/Alamy Mary (now in her 70s and also living in Rotherham) is among a very small minority who still heat their home using a coal fire. Her reflections were less positive: I remember going to fetch coal when I was pregnant. I gave birth two days later … It’s the dirt that gets you down, the dirt from the fire. It’s disheartening when your walls are always dirty. That’s why I had them tiled because I was painting them every six months before that. Carolina* (now in her mid-30s and living in Malmö) also had a negative recollection of her wood-burning childhood – but for a very different reason. She described how her mother had once “got the axe in her foot … She continued to chop wood anyway – but I kind of got PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] from her doing that. So I can’t do it, I’m really scared of it.” In Sweden, home heating was seen as key to improving social conditions after the war. The emphasis was on good-quality homes for everyone as the social welfare concept of folkhem (“the people’s home”) finally gained traction. The idea had first been articulated by future prime minister Per Albin Hansson in a speech to the Swedish parliament back in 1928, as a way of expressing his vision for a fair and equal society. From 1946, housing construction was regarded as a key political issue for improving public health and achieving Sweden’s other social welfare goals. In several cities, municipally owned public housing companies played an important role in the initial phase of new district heating systems, in part by guaranteeing a secure market. The introduction of the varmhyra (“warm rent”) policy meant heating and sometimes other utilities were included in the rent – an arrangement that continues to this day in many Swedish apartment blocks. The UK, like Sweden, suffered the blight of cold homes during the 1940s, exacerbated by fuel rationing that extended long beyond the war. So it is difficult to explain why Britain’s new post-war welfare state did not explicitly address home heating. Instead, the focus was on public health, with the birth of the National Health Service and recognition that the mass burning of coal was leading to fatal air pollution and unhealthy homes. Heavy city smogs, triggered by widespread coal burning in homes and factories, became increasingly common. The problem reached a climax when the “great smog of 1952” killed approximately 12,000 people, primarily in London, over just five days. Read more: ‘Brighter lives are lived by gas!’: how natural gas was sold to a sceptical public in post-war Britain The justification for rapidly phasing out coal as the UK’s primary fuel for homes and industry was centred around ending the public health crisis of these killer smogs, rather than on changing the way homes were heated – leading to the introduction of the Clean Air Act (1956). And as the UK scrabbled for a cleaner form of heating, a game-changing discovery was made. Huge reserves of “natural gas” (methane) were found off the Yorkshire coast in 1965, offering the huge advantage of reducing visible air pollutants compared with coal. One man in particular, Kenneth Hutchison, saw and seized the opportunity to present natural gas as the panacea the UK had been waiting for. As incoming president of the National Society for Clean Air, Hutchison hailed the gas industry as the driving force in Britain’s “smokeless revolution”. From the late 1960s, he drove the rollout of networks piping natural gas into UK households at an incredible rate, demanding: “We must convince the public that central heating by gas is best” over the grime and drudgery of coal fires. A 1965 advert for ‘high-speed’ British gas. Video: Anachronistic Anarchist. The chairman of British Gas, Denis Rooke – not an objective witness, admittedly – described the rollout as “perhaps the greatest peacetime operation in the nation’s history”. Between 1968 and 1976, around 13 million UK homes (of a total of about 15 million) were made ready for connection to the gas network. The cost of converting domestic heating and cooking systems from coal to gas was largely borne by the national gas supplier, making it effectively free to most households. Our research suggests this transition was presented to UK households as a fait accompli. But most of our UK-based interviewees remembered the advent of natural gas as a major step forward in cleanliness, comfort and convenience. As 75-year-old Rita from Rotherham recalled of moving into a new council estate with gas heating in 1967: It was like another universe! It was comfortable, everything became less intense – you didn’t need so much clothing … The days of cooking on the fire were gone. Fabulous! The boiler didn’t have to go all the time – the gas fire could take the chill off. Britain’s gas rollout not only brought gas central heating but other appliances such as gas fridges and fires that further lightened the domestic load. For Rita’s and many other families, it felt like a cascade of liberations which made homes brighter and more enjoyable to live in. Yet half a century later, Hutchison’s faith in gas appears less justified. While it certainly cleaned up the UK’s visible air pollution, natural gas is methane by another name – a powerful greenhouse gas. How Sweden ‘futureproofed’ With a much smaller population and less crowded cities, air quality in Sweden had been less of a concern than in the UK in the immediate post-war period. But in the 1960s, proposals for a mass home-building programme raised fears this could worsen air pollution. Without the option of “clean” natural gas, Sweden turned to district heating – an idea which had originated in New York in the 19th century. But Sweden committed to it in a big way during the 1960s and ‘70s, deciding it was the bes