Episode 144: Liz Allan and Ben Marks - Consumer Insights and the Road to Decarbonisation

Episode 144: Liz Allan and Ben Marks - Consumer Insights and the Road to Decarbonisation.

 Liz Allan speaks with Ben Marks, Managing Director of Electrify Research, to uncover why understanding homeowner behaviour is key to scaling up the transition to low-carbon technologies. With a background in market research and a passion for decarbonisation, Ben shares how his company’s Home Electrification Tracker Study (HETS) is helping businesses, banks, and policymakers make smarter, data-driven decisions. Together, Liz and Ben explore the real attitudes of over 32,000 homeowners across the UK, US, Germany, and France towards solar panels, electric vehicles, heat pumps, and home battery systems, painting a detailed picture of what’s driving (and stalling) the shift to cleaner technologies. They discuss why changing the public narrative around electrification remains such a challenge, especially in the face of persistent misinformation. Ben highlights how pinpointing the right consumer segments, such as “Electrification Trailblazers” and “Pragmatic Adopters”, is essential to accelerating adoption. The conversation also delves into the core motivations and barriers people experience when considering low-carbon alternatives, and how a systems-thinking approach can create powerful synergies between technologies, enabling benefits like lower bills and smarter, more efficient energy use across the home.

Ben Marks Bio:
Ben Marks is the Managing Director of Electrify Research and the founder of the Home Electrification Tracker Study (HETS). With over two decades in market research, including founding YouthSight and leading it for 18 years, Ben now applies his expertise to the energy transition. Passionate about decarbonisation and data-led decision-making, he’s helping businesses, banks, and governments understand homeowner attitudes towards electrification technologies and accelerate the move to net zero.

Ben Marks Links:
Website: https://www.electrifyresearch.co.uk
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-marks-6818285

Quote of the Episode

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Transcript

Liz Allan  [00:00:01]:
So on today's episode, I have with me Ben Marks, and he's the managing director at Electrify Research.

Liz Allan  [00:00:26]:
We've been speaking for a little while, haven't we, Ben? So, I finally managed to get you on the podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Ben Marks [00:00:33]:
It's great to be here, and I'm really pleased to finally do it.

Liz Allan  [00:00:38]:
So, Electrify Research is your most recent business, isn't it? But let's dig down into a little bit of why you started it, what you did to build on it, and what the company is anyway.

Ben Marks [00:00:56]:
Right. Okay. I'll go very, very briefly deep into my past and sort of try to fast-forward to today quite quickly.

Ben Marks [00:01:06]:
So, my background, the first part of my career, was in sales. I didn't enjoy it. I went off and did an MBA. And as many people use an MBA, it's a way to pivot a career. And after several years, kind of, after my MBA, I ended up in the market research sector in about 1999. And fast forward a few years to 02/2004, I set up, a research agency called Youth Site, and I ended up running that for eighteen years.

Liz Allan  [00:01:49]:
Wow.

Ben Marks [00:01:50]:
Yeah. It felt like a lifetime, but I loved it. I loved it. It was my baby. I founded it, ran it, and owned it. And, we were a specialist youth research agency, about 30 people. And we had an access panel, which is a kind of thing in the market research industry where you get people who want to take part in surveys to agree to it and give them a sort of incentivised mechanism. So you pay them cash to do surveys.

Ben Marks [00:02:28]:
So we have the biggest youth panel in the UK, a 50,000-strong young people's panel.

Liz Allan  [00:02:33]:
Wow.

Ben Marks [00:02:33]:
We built up a range of tracker surveys, which were primarily for the higher education sector.

Liz Allan  [00:02:44]:
Okay.

Ben Marks [00:02:45]:
There were four of them, and we worked with almost every university in the country. The idea was to create a kind of consumer insight currency for the higher education sector, because universities are involved in lots of things in relation to students, their attraction, recruitment, satisfaction, retention, and alumni. So there's a kind of whole life cycle, and we created tracker surveys to allow universities to get deep insights into each of those stages and compare their performance against competitors. And, so we built that and sort of to finish my background, or the first part of it, I eventually sold that business to a market research agency called Savanta, who you'll sometimes see from doing election results and stuff like that.

Ben Marks [00:03:42]:
Or election, polling. And, I let I worked there for a year, and I left that business. And then the next question was, what now? That's in 2022.

Liz Allan  [00:03:55]:
Okay. Yeah. And that's, and then you set up Electrify kind of on the back of leaving, leaving the youth site, or Cervantes, then.

Ben Marks [00:04:07]:
Yeah, exactly that. So well, I had a bit of time off, a year, which was quite nice. And then, I was sort of borderline about whether I was going to become a teacher or whether I was going to have another crack at market research.

Liz Allan  [00:04:23]:
That's a bit different there, Ben.

Ben Marks [00:04:26]:
Very different. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:04:27]:
Great.

Ben Marks [00:04:28]:
I know. I know. It was kind of something different or something that I know. Mhmm. And I guess it's the confluence of a few different things, but I've been listening to podcasts around the energy transition for a long, long time. Mhmm. Things like the Energy Gang and cleaning up with Michael Lee Bryche, and oh, so many. Bloomberg, NEF and, I don't know, scores of them.

Ben Marks [00:05:03]:
And I've become very interested. I started reading books around the transition and in particular electrification, which I see is the most important route to or the fastest and most realistic route to wide-scale decarbonisation.

Liz Allan  [00:05:19]:
Yes.

Ben Marks [00:05:20]:
So, so I, I I I I felt I wanted to do something in that space. The other idea was teaching, which I think is good work and has always interested me. But ultimately, I decided to go for the market research because in the territory I know, I know how to set up tracker studies. I'm very passionate about the idea of decarbonization and domestic carbon emissions. And I know kind of how to do consumer research. And then finally, the final piece of the motivation was I did my own survey of what's out there in terms of consumer-focused insights. And, I think the answer is was very little. Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:06:09]:
So organisations could do their own research, commission research, but, you know, it's in a sector that certainly two years ago, but still now, it's dominated by engineers, technologists, policy people, but not many marketing heads. So I and my feeling is, my contention and the the motto of the business is that it's, without it's it's consumers who will decide the pace of, electricity. Yeah. They and so we without insight into what they're thinking and who we should be targeting, the transition will not go at this pace it needs to go at, and we all know that is a lot faster. Right?

Liz Allan  [00:06:58]:
Because there were people I was talking to, Kirsty Pendleton, recently from the AA, and we were talking about the misinformation. I always talk about this in the podcast, and she was talking specifically about the percentage of their members who wouldn't even like now that you know they're not they're host, they're totally hostile to moving to electric vehicles, you know, for a start-up. I know yours isn't just EVs. Yours is the energy and electric vehicles. But that was quite interesting to sort of hear that insight from Kirsty from that point of view. Yeah. So, so yeah. I think it's a really important thing. So, who are you? Who am I? I'm assuming so, I'm assuming you're putting together access panels again, and you've got participants who are on these panels. What are you specifically asking them? What kind of questions?

Ben Marks [00:08:09]:
Yeah. Well, first of all, on misinformation and myths, yeah, we measure those. And you're right. You're right. They're significant and enduring. So there's they're not changing much over two years.

Liz Allan  [00:08:26]:
Oh, god.

Ben Marks [00:08:27]:
That's an important trend. However, you didn't ask me that.

Liz Allan  [00:08:32]:
No. No. That's important. That's important. Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:08:34]:
I know. We can talk about that.

Liz Allan  [00:08:35]:
If they're not, then. Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:08:37]:
Yeah, no. There's not a huge amount of movement. But I've always been rather shocked at the extent. But I don't think that's the whole story around misinformation. We can talk about it later. But in terms of who we're talking to, every quarter, we talk to 4,000 homeowners. They're not the electrified panel.

Ben Marks [00:09:01]:
We go out into the industry and go to panel owners like my company used to be at U Sight. We go to panel owners and we, essentially, we get in return for the fact that they they they bill us for the cash incentives and the access to their respondents, and they have millions of respondents. So we set up quotas so that the sample that we get back into our questions, the people who respond to our questions, are representative of the different groups that we're including. And we're including homeowners in the UK, France, Germany, and the US. So we've got comparative

Liz Allan  [00:09:41]:
Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:09:41]:
For the results. And we talked to 4,000 a quarter, which is 16,000 a year, a thousand in each territory. And so far we've been going for two years, so we've got 32,000 interviews in the camp. No. And that essentially acts as a database which you can look at longitudinally, so look at the trends, or you can look at it as a snapshot and sort of interrogate the data in quite a deep way as well, using the tools on the dashboard. So it's really, like we've got the views. Every view is there. You're able to sort of, sculpt the sample that you're looking at so that you can understand every subgroup, every group, every you know, you know, every facet of the data.

Liz Allan  [00:10:33]:
Okay. So you've got your homeowners. Yeah, that's a lot of people. You've got 32,000 responses so far. Yeah. What kind of questions are you asking them? So, are you asking people who are thinking about electrifying, or are they, or are they not, or what are you actually asking them?

Ben Marks [00:11:00]:
Yeah. So, good question. We're talking about questions. We are talking to homeowners, and the question essentially looks at four technologies: solar, battery, EV, and heat pump.

Ben Marks [00:11:18]:
And, they're the target technologies, but we're talking to them about their setups. And we're talking to them about cars, roofs, and heating systems, essentially. We asked them what they had got and what they might consider when it comes to making a change. And then, so that's kind of, then we ask them a lot about their attitudes toward climate. And then we ask, kind of some hypothetical questions, which for the considerors of each of our target technologies, we ask them what they see as the benefits and drawbacks, what are the drivers and barriers to change, but we ask the same of people who reject the technologies. So essentially, what we're doing is picking up a, what they call, a path to purchase. What kind of consumer journey do you have? What might you consider? What are your attitudes? What might your future look like? It's always difficult to predict the future, but at least we can pick up what's on what's in peep. What are the considerations that people are bringing to a purchase decision?

Liz Allan  [00:12:36]:
You said so right. You've got solar batteries, EVs, and heat pumps. Yeah, they're all quite different, but they're all different technologies.

Ben Marks [00:12:47]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:12:48]:
Are is the thinking for all of these technologies the same when you're when you're getting these these answers or or this is gen this is just generally, I suppose I'm asking, or do you find because I mean there was a whole thing about heat pumps a few year a couple of years ago wasn't there or a few years ago about, you know, the the negativity of of that was out there and we know where it was coming from now because it was it was being promoted by certain people in certain areas. Are people changing their decisions about some of this technology since you've started this research, or is it still the same? There's we're not gonna do any of this because

Ben Marks [00:13:39]:
Yeah. Change has been less speedy than I'd expected in most areas. There's kind of consideration, so we look at it. That's an important sort of metric. And consideration, so would you consider getting? A consideration for EVs is, in The UK, is going up slightly, quarter on quarter. And, consideration for heat pumps was going up for the first year, so we're now at the end of year two, but it has been static in the UK for the second year, and it didn't go up much. Okay. So it went up, but it's been fairly static.

Ben Marks [00:14:27]:
So yeah, and in the other territories you have France, Germany, the US, actually fairly static too, but that's only part of the picture, the trends, because there's a lot of movement within that body of people. And there's a lot that you can do with the demand that exists. So you don't have to always worry about net demand. You can think, are we effectively targeting the people with a strong demand? And in a way, that's what the beauty of the product is. It lets you identify the groups who, you know, what they call the lower Lowering. Yeah. So are you converting them efficiently? Because you're not you, you know, you're sometimes pushing at an open door. So we need to be we need to identify that.

Ben Marks [00:15:30]:
And again, going back slightly, rewinding slightly, you asked before that these are diverse technologies, kind of arguably having nothing to do with each other. You can't substitute a car for a heating system.

Liz Allan  [00:15:45]:
You're gonna drive me, not gonna drive my heat pump around.

Ben Marks [00:15:49]:
Exactly. Exactly. But on the other hand, they've got something in common, which is the same fuel. When you have a gas boiler and petrol car, you can't swap, you know, your gas for your petrol or vice versa if you've got a bit too much petrol in the tank below on, you know, 10 p coins for your meter. Yeah. You can't do that. But when you get a common fuel, special things start to happen, which is, you know, the s curve around, home electrification or at least in theory, that's what it is. So you start to get solar panels, and you say, well, actually, I can charge my car for free.

Ben Marks [00:16:33]:
So suddenly, an EV becomes attractive. Yes, you have a vehicle-to-home facility in your EV, and all of a sudden, you think, well, we don't use the car that much. How about we run the heating off the car battery occasionally? And then you see the new sort of range of demand-responsive tariffs.

Ben Marks [00:17:01]:
You know, fixed tariffs with type time of use or variable time of use, and you think, well, actually, I could do with paying 7p for my electricity rather than whatever, 25, 30p, whatever it is. Things start to fall into place, and we can show that with our data. So these are network effects, and we can show that with our data. So if you've got solar, for example, rooftop solar, you might want a small number of people to want, sorry. If you don't have rooftop solar, a small number of people might want a heat pump and an EV. If you do have solar, we can measure how much that uplifts by, and it's huge.

Ben Marks [00:17:50]:
You know, it's not, it's like doublings. And we can do that for all the different technologies, creating a matrix of ownership of one product and how it impacts the potential demand for other products. Also, we can look at co-ownership, where if you've got one product, what's the likelihood that you've got another product?

Liz Allan  [00:18:11]:
I suppose, yeah, with us, we kind of went for a few at once, you know, because actually we found an installer that could provide solar and a battery and, kind of an, but as was, we had a charger as well. You know? So, and then we got an EV afterwards. And then now? Pardon? We've got a heat pump as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:18:39]:
So yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:18:40]:
We're we're we're we're cut we're cut well, I'm not saying we're totally carbon neutral because I order from Amazon, and I need to stop that. But hey. But, actually, we're fossil fuel-free in the house. So so you're right. There is that kind of moving through the technologies and, you know, once you've kind of embraced these things, it makes sense. I mean, in a way, we had no choice. Well, so we decided we wanted a heat pump at some point, but we never expected our boiler to die when it did. You know? So so that kind of that happened last year.

Liz Allan  [00:19:16]:
So we had the heat pump put in last October. So, so, yeah, it is that I suppose it's getting people to think, oh, and when something goes wrong, you can get something that's more for you know, it doesn't have to be full of fossil fuels. You don't have to just get another boiler. You know, you don't have to get another, you know, fossil fuel-filled vehicle. You've got these different choices, haven't you?

Ben Marks [00:19:44]:
You do. You have a brilliant case. You know, are you finding it okay? Are you finding the cross benefits?

Liz Allan  [00:19:54]:
And Yeah. I mean, there were a few things, Ben, that we wished we'd done slightly differently. Like, we wish we'd got a bigger battery. But then, at some point, like you're saying about vehicle to home, you know, hopefully, we'll change EV, and maybe at that point in time, we might be able to use the car as, you know, as a battery. And after I had my I said to you one week before we started recording, I had an operation on my Achilles, kinda, like, four weeks ago, and the car's not really been out. I'm the main driver because my husband will get the bus and whatnot. So, you know, that car has been sitting there, and it could have been 38.5 kilowatts worth of power coming into the house.

Ben Marks [00:20:38]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:20:38]:
So, you know, people don't always recognise that. We've had a few teething problems with the heat pump, but it seems to have settled down now. But it's like anything, isn't it? You know, you go through these transitions, and it's kind of right as socket and see, but luckily, the heat pump company helped us, and we got where we need to be now. So, so yeah. Yeah. We but we have we have all of the package now.

Ben Marks [00:21:07]:
You were ahead of me. I've just got my first. I was at a PHEV, and now, as of last week, I've got an EV.

Liz Allan  [00:21:18]:
Oh, brilliant.

Ben Marks [00:21:19]:
Well, I'm happy with the EV. The tech in it is more complicated. But regarding heat pump satisfaction, which you were saying about for yourself, we find that it's actually the form of heating with the highest level of satisfaction.

Liz Allan  [00:21:39]:
Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:21:40]:
Yes, you do get teething problems sometimes. But once they settle down, they often have a higher quality of heat and more stable temperatures.

Liz Allan  [00:21:51]:
Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:21:52]:
So I think there's a lot to be said for them and, you know, looking at the four countries that we cover, it's the highest level of satisfaction compared to gas boilers, solid fuel, and storage heaters. So yeah. I hope it will be a positive future for you. In terms of something else you mentioned, which was about distressed purchases. That's slightly bad news because we ask people, under what circumstances might you change your heating system? Now, for heat pumps, it's much better if it's a planned purchase or a summer purchase, which isn't typically when boilers break.

Liz Allan  [00:22:46]:
No. It's not full enough.

Ben Marks [00:22:50]:
They tend to break at the worst possible moment, and you then want a drop-in solution, which is the gas boiler. Sixty per cent of homeowners in the UK say that they will change their heating system when it breaks down and can't be repaired. So you've only got a market of a third of people who will even consider a planned purchase. It immediately narrows down, and then of those, most won't even consider a heat pump. So the sort of universe of people gets smaller and smaller quite quickly. That's the bad news. The good news is that we're at such low penetration rates and new install rates, probably about 10% on new installs, which includes quite a lot more than that on new builds. But, on heating system installs, including retrofits, it might be 10%, but you're looking at maybe two and a half per cent total penetration of heat pumps in the UK.

Ben Marks [00:23:59]:
So we've got a lot of upside and much more potential demand than is actually going in. So there's quite a lot of goodwill, and you just have to be able to identify it, which is kind of the central point of HETS, which is the study we run called the homeowner electrification tracker study. So, there is quite a lot of demand, and I'm wondering if this is too long an answer.

Liz Allan  [00:24:31]:
No. No. No. No. No. No. Don't be too. 

Liz Allan  [00:24:33]:
Go on. Go on.

Ben Marks [00:24:56]:
Yeah. So we look at people's attitudes to climate. I just need to put my teeth in. And the belief in myths around heat pumps and EVs and attitudes to renewables, just broadly. And then we do a kind of cluster analysis where we find groups that have a lot in common, quite cohesive, but quite different from each other.

Ben Marks [00:25:22]:
And then they are segments. That's a classic market research segmentation. When you overlay the segments onto things like demand for heat pumps or interest in EVs as the next car, you start to see something quite magical, which is that there are typically out of our it's eight segments. Of our eight segments, two are massively more likely to buy. And they're the people who heat pump manufacturers, charge point operators, slash EV manufacturers, policy makers, and banks should be targeting. To go out with a generic marketing message is, in my view, crackers. Yeah. That undermines the whole of marketing, which is, you know, in my MBA, they said, my marketing professors said marketing is all about choosing your customers.

Ben Marks [00:26:36]:
Heat pump manufacturers should choose very carefully because their customers are in a small group, and they need to be able to identify them. Actually, it's not that far different, even though it's a more mature market with cars and EVs. It's slightly different with solar.

Liz Allan  [00:26:57]:
Okay.

Ben Marks [00:26:59]:
But in terms of the segmentation. But, yeah. So, having consumer data allows you to zero in on our top two segments. They're called electrification trailblazers and pragmatic adopters. You can identify them by their demographics, age, gender, income, and education level. You can identify them that way by their attitude, so the sorts of messages which would excite them. And you can see what their impact is in terms of their consideration and whether or not they think if they are considering a heat pump or an EV, whether they think they're gonna follow through and actually purchase, which is another question that we ask because self-reporting on purchase intention is actually quite a good way to predict sales.

Ben Marks [00:27:55]:
So, would you consider an EV? Liz, how likely do you think you are to actually get an EV? There are lots of people who'd consider one.

Liz Allan  [00:28:05]:
Yeah. But they wouldn't necessarily go and get one. Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:28:07]:
When you get it, and you know, a lot of them say Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:28:11]:
Yeah. Actually, I'm just going back a step as well because you talked about charge point operators, but we're talking about home charging, not public charging, aren't we? This is all to do with the home rather than any kind of public charging. So I just wanted to confirm that it's your home charging products, isn't it?

Ben Marks [00:28:31]:
Yeah. I mean, we're talking to homeowners and, in our sample in the UK, I think, I can't remember, maybe two-thirds to three-quarters of all the homeowners have access to our street parking. So that's a huge factor that has a huge impact on the likelihood of purchasing an EV. So, yeah, it's of less interest to public charging because, obviously, if you've got a home charger, that's what you'll use most.

Liz Allan  [00:29:01]:
And it's, I believe, that's the study that you do. That's the kind of research that you're doing anyway. It's not out in a public car park and charging there, is it? It's it's that it's that kind of ecosystem in your home.

Ben Marks [00:29:14]:
Yeah. So we're talking to homeowners.

Liz Allan  [00:29:16]:
Yeah.

Ben Marks [00:29:17]:
And you know, they're over 18. They take part in major purchase decisions, and we talk to a sample that is representative of each country. Yeah. Yeah. So the homeowner.

Liz Allan  [00:29:31]:
So okay. So you've you're collecting all of these insights. Yeah. And I wanted to just kinda delve a little bit into who these insights are for, who your target market is for this?

Ben Marks [00:29:47]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:29:47]:
This is a subscription service, isn't it?

Ben Marks [00:29:50]:
Yeah. It is. Exactly.

Liz Allan  [00:29:51]:
It's a subscription service. Can you just explain a little bit about the actual target markets that you're you're kind of you're working with?

Ben Marks [00:30:00]:
Yeah. Exactly. So the sorts of it's it's for businesses. So it's not for consumers. And it's to help them market better, by giving them consumer data. So the sorts of organisations that are gonna be most interested would be banks, in particular banks with sustainability teams or interest in sustainability. Sometimes it's in a team, a silo, and sometimes it sits across the products. But either way, if they're looking to increase their green loan book, then we can help.

Ben Marks [00:30:41]:
Energy providers is the other is another big one. Obviously, they've got a lot of tariffs, and they've got insulation businesses. Government and policy makers, they need data on what homeowners want and believe, home charge point well, you know, home home charging, trade associations and media. So those are the sorts of, clients who have or I'll be targeting for the product. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:31:15]:
Because I was I I was when you said banks, I it took me a minute to actually work out, but now you're saying about kind of the the green loans and and things like that. That makes total sense, you know. And and like you say, if you wanted to kind of narrow down that that marketing message and making sure that you are targeting the right people who are looking, it's about giving them that right the right stories and the right storytelling and stories and the messaging, isn't it, to come to bring them bring them from somebody who's considering it to a purchaser.

Ben Marks [00:31:48]:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Two of our segments are electrification trailblazers and pragmatic adopters. These are the key ones. It goes all the way down through kind of pro green but not enough money and things like that. Mhmm. And through to the final group, which is the denying rejecters, who have a low propensity for everything and really buy into those myths.

Ben Marks [00:32:19]:
But, the first two segments are absolutely critical, and to be able to sort of nail them down means that if you've got a social media strategy and obviously a lot of spend nowadays goes through search-based advertising, you know, AdWords or Instagram or everything online. You've got you've got these levers that you can pull. You can target by age, gender, and interests. And you can determine the advertising that you're putting out, the messaging and even the product in terms of the things that are gonna chime with each of the segments. So it allows you to give a surgically, sort of, surgically defined message to a particular audience, which should mean that you get much more bang for your marketing buck rather than spending whatever. Whether it's a thousand pounds or a million pounds on a campaign, you get more bang for the money. And it might not be a campaign. It might be a government initiative to target certain people.

Ben Marks [00:33:39]:
Or, so there's a, you know, wide range of reasons why you wanna find the right people.

Liz Allan  [00:33:46]:
I mean, this is when it comes down to it, this is, and I talk we talk about this quite a bit as well, but this is about bringing everybody on the journey and equity, isn't it? You know? So so I hope I was I was actually gonna ask you about about kind of the government side of things because I suppose if you've got these insights that you have more of than a government would, then then, you know, you are you can identify those people who are moving towards these technologies and those who just aren't, and and maybe even identifying the reasons why they aren't heading in the direction for, you know, wanting to change their change to those technologies. And then hopefully, the you know, even even a government has to market, don't they? As in, you know, you're targeting areas to make sure that that it is quicker, you know, we have got equity if I can get my teeth in, you know, because we want everybody to come on this journey.

Ben Marks [00:34:46]:
Yeah. Yeah. We do. It's my view that, realistically, in the short term, not everybody will be able to come on this journey.

Ben Marks [00:34:57]:
 But the process has to go as quickly as possible. If only to allow the OEMs, the installer community to gear up with early innovators or earlier adopters, so that they've got the capacity to deal with the mainstream when it comes. And that's on all the different products, you know. We've only got 10%, seemingly, solar penetration. Is that right? But there's a huge proportion of people who are interested. Actually, a point I was gonna make before about why solar is different is that there's almost no resistance to it by segment. So it's it's, the only problem with solar or the benefit and the problem with solar is financial. Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:35:49]:
So it's the fear of high upfront costs, but it's also the benefit of money off your electricity bill. Yeah. That's the store that's the big story with solar. Mhmm. But there are some important factors around solar, which would include that income doesn't make a difference in ambition, but it makes a big difference in timescale. So lots of people think I want solar, but I'll get it sometime in the next x years. Certain people think I want solar, and they're thinking this year or next year. And, an income is a is is quite a powerful predictor of that.

Ben Marks [00:36:35]:
Yes. So, solar is different from the other technologies. It's much less, it's much less contentious.

Liz Allan  [00:36:44]:
Yeah. Because I suppose, and the other thing I would say, is that my in-laws over in St. Albans got rooftop solar when there was the feed-in tariff.

Ben Marks [00:36:59]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:37:00]:
But they've got a whole roof full of solar panels.

Ben Marks [00:37:06]:
Nice.

Liz Allan  [00:37:06]:
But we worked it out, and I think this is right: we've got nine solar panels. So we've got I think we've got we've got six and we've got a really weird roof, but we've got kind of six and then it dips down and we've got a two and a one, so we've got nine in total, and for those nine we've got the same amount of power, you know, or pull that my in laws have, and I can't remember how many panels they are. But because of the, you know, the ability for the panels to kind of draw more energy and, you know, and all of the other stuff, it's kind of things that I'm saying are things that change so much, don't they? The panels are I think our panels are quite a bit bigger, so that's probably why, but I said I can't my husband would know all this and kind of go she's saying she doesn't know what I should about, But, you know, so I I know that we we can kind of get more out of them. We don't get that it's the feed-in tariff, not the buying tariff, isn't it? We don't get we don't get that, obviously, because we've only had ours a couple of years now. But it's that kind of fact that technology changes, things get cheaper, hopefully, over time. I mean, you know, look at how we can buy well, not necessarily buy a mobile phone. I got my mobile phone last year and it's on a contract, you know. So look at all the ways that we can we can kind of do all of this stuff, and actually we've got it in order to bring people along this journey.

Liz Allan  [00:38:41]:
We've got to be heading towards making it more affordable for everybody, haven't we? I mean, even with the, you know, with the kind of the money that you get from the grant for the heat pump, the other end it's still a lot of money.

Liz Allan  [00:38:57]:
Do you know what I mean? And not everybody's got that, and we were lucky, you know, we kind of, there were things we had to kind of fiddle around with things, but we managed to, you know, we managed to afford it. So, but not everybody's got that kind of ability, have they? We've got to bring more people on it.

Ben Marks [00:39:16]:
Yeah. I think that, according to Ambiance data, which I I look at their report, The I think, the average install is kinda like 13,000, something like that. $12.30. And the bus grant is what? 7 and a half. Bus grant? So it's a big gap to fill, especially if your home needs, you know, a bit more insulation or whatever. And, yeah, it's not without it's not without difficulties or problems, but you need as I like I said before, you need to pump prime the market in order for it to go mainstream. The kind of thing that I always remember, cling to sometimes, is that hydrocarbons are as cheap as they'll ever be, broadly speaking. Obviously, you get changes in demand, changes in price. But in terms of extraction, they're never gonna get much better than they are now. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:40:20]:
But with electrification technologies, because it's modular and because there's so much R&D going on, they will get lots cheaper. Much, much cheaper. And that's every technology. We can see it right now with batteries that, you know, are advancing at an incredible speed. The chemistries are getting less obnoxious and more benign. The heat pumps are actually getting more efficient. And I think, once they've more than the but more than helping people with the installation, what they need to do, and I think everybody knows this and agrees, they need to reform the way that the price is formulated for electricity because of the spark gap.

Liz Allan  [00:41:10]:
Decoupling.

Ben Marks [00:41:11]:
Decou yeah. Exactly. So when that happens, and I am hopeful well, you know, this is be way beyond my pay grade, but, hopefully, that will happen at some point.

Liz Allan  [00:41:21]:
I hope so, too. I know There Greg Jackson of Octopus Energy is pushing for decoupling of gas and electricity. I know I know he is.

Ben Marks [00:41:29]:
Yeah. And he's, you know, he's, you know I think he's probably a hero of everybody who's in this space. He's absolutely brilliant. But, yes. So obviously, decoupling, changing that, changing the economics, will change everything around heat. And, I guess that's dependent to a certain extent on overbuilding wind and solar or increasing the rollout of those technologies. So the gas becomes the intermittent supplier. But that's all kind of grid stuff supply side, which isn't really my world.

Ben Marks [00:42:06]:
My world is the demand side. And the exam question at the moment is, how are we gonna accelerate electrification in homes right now? Because we were supposed to be halving, we are halving, carbon emissions by the end of, this decade. And we are at best globally, at the top of the plateau. So we've got a long way to go and, you know, there are a lot of people out there who are kind of throwing their hands up in the air and saying, well, we can't do anything about this. And we're just a relatively small emitter in the global scheme of things. But everyone takes that attitude. We're all going, you know, it's it's a problem for everybody, you know, especially our children. Cheers.

Ben Marks [00:43:02]:
So we have to do something, in my view. And, you know, everyone in this space and probably everyone listening to this podcast, you know, they get that. And there are so many brilliant people working to that end. If we work together and we do it smart, my contribution is, I guess, insight on demand at this troubled period. Eventually, it will be straightforward, and everyone will want to electrify their homes. But for this next period, which might be ten years, or a bit more. No. No.

Ben Marks [00:43:36]:
We need to be surgical about it. And I'm not sure that kind of generic messaging even if you want equity, I'm not sure if it's achievable right now because the prices of the products just aren't quite there.

Liz Allan  [00:43:51]:
It's either that the only other option is to kinda have more government involvement, but I don't know whether that's going to happen at the moment. We we'll'll have to see. But going back to what you said about everybody in this sector, what I'd love to see is everybody out there wanting to do something rather than nothing. You know? Because if we all do something a little bit, you know, it makes a big difference. It's kind of like I talk about incremental change and continuous improvement. You know, all of those little changes make a big difference. You might think what you're doing is, you know, well, I'm only doing a little bit. You know? Just do something and keep doing that something, or keep adding on to that something, because doing something, again, like I say, is better than doing nothing.

Ben Marks [00:44:49]:
Exactly. And it's that at the personal level, but at the organisational level as well. Exactly the same story. So for example, total cost of ownership on an EV is very often in fact, I think probably getting to the point of normally, cheaper than, on a ICE car. But the upfront cost is higher. So innovative packaging around leases and I purchase or whatever, is very very important in the picture. Changing public charging costs. And that that's probably a function of of demand and how widespread they are, but we're in the early we're in the foothills of this.

Ben Marks [00:45:33]:
But different types of organisations, like banks, charge point operators, and energy providers, have all got their part to play. You know, Octopus Go or the better ones than that, Octopus and the Go Intelligent or whatever it's got. Those will make a huge difference. So everybody's playing a part in innovative financing, good tariffs, the right sort of advertising, the right sort of targeting, which I can help with. They're all playing a part. And on heat, it's more challenging than EV, but there's a positive story to tell. Installations are going up really fast. It's just not where the government's ambition was.

Ben Marks [00:46:21]:
That's all. Right? But we'll get there, and the starting point of getting there is targeting. I mean, it's given a number. We look at the top three out. It's actually—I don't know how I didn't know it was six segments. The top three out of the six segments, not eight. The top three out of the six, in our estimation, will account for 97% of heat pump sales.

Liz Allan  [00:46:51]:
Oh, gosh.

Ben Marks [00:46:52]:
Yeah. And so if you're targeting right now, if you're targeting you can believe in equity, and everybody needs to be on this journey, but it's probably not realistic for off the market to be on this journey right now. So the message, my kind of hymn sheet I sing from, is we need to be targeting the three and really two segments who are going to buy.

Liz Allan  [00:47:24]:
And and take them from that, and I know I said it before, but that that kind of lack of understanding because a lot of the time, like you you know you're saying there are lots of people interested, but I mean if I go right back to the reason why I started this podcast in the first place was because I didn't have a clue. I didn't have a clue about any of this stuff, do you know what I mean? And both me and my husband wanted to learn and I wanted to learn about about all the different areas and aspects of electrification and that's why I invited people like yourself to come on and talk about this because I just thought well if it, if it's not it, you know, if I think like that then it's probably not just me you know and I want to share this when people are kind of providing this, this, these insights and all of this knowledge that let's get it out there, let's share it and yeah we get, we get sort of people being rude on YouTube to kind of, you know, to the if they're not, if they're not, if they're not up for it, then that's up to them. You know?

Ben Marks [00:48:26]:
Why watch it if you don't

Liz Allan  [00:48:28]:
Well, well, well, it's those algorithms, isn't it? Do you know what I mean? It's kind of you're more likely to get I don't know why people don't realize that you're more likely to get stuff that you don't like coming into your feed if you kind of put you know, you get messages about this, that, and the other, and they're just oh my god. Sometimes, some of the messages we get, I just have to ignore them. I wonder if we even have a TikTok channel or a TikTok account, and one guy posted 99 messages. And I just said, oh, good. Come on. So I ended up, you know, had to block, I'm afraid. But it's, you know, that I'm not saying all of these people who were negative will change their minds at the moment. We just need to get those, like I say, with the lack of understanding and lack of clarity because of the fact that they've had all of this negative messaging thrown at them.

Liz Allan  [00:49:24]:
And people just believe it because how do you know what the truth is? If lots of people are saying things that, you know, that actually isn't true? You've how do how do you know? How do you get to the bottom of what the actual truth is?

Ben Marks [00:49:40]:
Yeah. Well, two things. First of all, your podcast is brilliant. I love it because, it's because of what you said, the diversity and like I can learn about, you know, I I I was just fascinated by the episode on, powering up, Arctic lorries or whatever the you know, trucks.

Liz Allan  [00:50:06]:
Yeah. With Amy.

Ben Marks [00:50:08]:
Yeah. Yeah. It was astonishing. These huge vehicles are now going electric. So, how does it work and how is the electricity brought to the different locations? So it's a brilliant podcast and exactly what you said, you know, bringing all these different pieces of the puzzle together starts to create a holistic picture, which people kind of get the hang of, and you're doing it in a lot of detail. But you talked about myths, and we all know which newspapers come up with new myths every day, and they propagate these things and people on LinkedIn who are specialists in it. But there are lots of people, but this is my view, lots of people buy the myths, but they're not they're not catastrophic because people can hold two truths in their mind at once.

Ben Marks [00:51:07]:
And it can be that they think that the batteries on EVs are very damaging, but they can also accept that they're less damaging than, that they're less damaging than, the petrol alternative. You know, they they they might they might make that so as I say, there's lots of I think we tested five myths on EVs. Really high buy into all of them, but it doesn't necessarily even EV owners buy into a lot of them, but it didn't stop them. They just perhaps think that they're not as bad as the petrol alternative. So even if they're not true at all, like, you know, EVs destroy the roads or they throw up microplastics in different proportions to ice cars or, yeah. The batteries are so polluting that, you know, it's difficult to decide what's better, I saw. But as I say, people can hold two truths at the same time.

Liz Allan  [00:52:16]:
I know.

Ben Marks [00:52:16]:
What, actually, sorry. They're not two truths. Are they? They can hold conflicting ideas at the same time.

Liz Allan  [00:52:22]:
Exact and actually, there's a conversation I had with oh god. I had a conversation with somebody I used to work with quite a few years ago recently, and the battery situation came up because both my battery and another chap who I used to work with have the same vehicle. We've got it's got the same e v as us, and I just mentioned it, and this and this chap I was talking to, basically, was saying, well, you know, about battery minerals and batteries and stuff. But it was one of those conversations I really wasn't expecting. He's another improvement person as well, so I was a bit gutted. And and, actually, that sort of it threw me. And afterwards, I just thought, why did I not mention laptops and mobiles? You know, because I but I do agree. I did say to him, you know, I do agree because of the fact that, you know, we are kind of digging up loads of rare rare earth minerals anyway, aren't we? That's the whole point of calling them rare.

Liz Allan  [00:53:23]:
But I do get what he's saying, but some of the things he was saying weren't quite right, so you know, but you've got to pick your fights, haven't you? You've got to pick your arguments and I think that's really important and if it you know if it is totally untrue I wouldn't have I wouldn't have flinched you know actually saying what the truth was but when it comes to kind of that that level of right he's got his thoughts on this you know and and I basically said the reason why we went for all of this in our house is because my husband's a climate scientist which he knows and also the fact that we wanted to stop using fossil fuels. That's it. You know, it's literally I wasn't gonna argue with him at all anymore, and I just said, that's the reason why. We'll have to just agree to disagree because I have my thoughts this way. But I do agree I do agree in certain with certain parts of what he was saying. But, again, like I say, it's about choosing those arguments, isn't it?

Ben Marks [00:54:28]:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most of my friends don't know, hold lots of misinformation in their minds, and they kinda give it to me, challenge me. I'm not sure they're always interested in the answer because I yak and yak and yak. I'm fascinated by the whole thing, by the whole, you know, sustainability, decarbonization, all the different technologies. I love it. So I kind of go on a bit too much sometimes. And you're right.

Ben Marks [00:55:00]:
You've got to pick your battles. And in a way, the basic message, which is that I wanna leave the world. I don't wanna, you know, I don't wanna have a terrible impact on the climate, and this is better than that. Yeah. But a lot of people just get it, and they don't have to fight it. And

Liz Allan  [00:55:20]:
Mhmm.

Ben Marks [00:55:21]:
It's actually huge amounts of confusion that that certain newspapers, he keeps adding, he keeps saying, certain newspapers come up with these messages. Just confuses I think people know the truth, which is that burning fossils is not a great idea for the planet. Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:55:40]:
It just takes a while a while to come to come through. So what would be your final question?

Ben Marks [00:55:48]:
Yeah.

Liz Allan  [00:55:50]:
If you could leave people listening and watching with one message that you wanted to finish with, what would that what would that message be? Whether it's about your work, whether it's about, you know, what they what their marketing messages need to change to, you know, that kind anything. You tell me.

Ben Marks [00:56:12]:
Well, I suppose what I said at the beginning is that if you get the idea that it's consumers who are going to be driving decarbonization of homes, if you get that, if you buy that, then you should use high-quality consumer data to drive your decisions. Mhmm. And to not do so, it seems I don't know. If you're missing out on a trick, you might be wasting money. And that's really what it's all about because you you we've we all work within budgets. So it's kind of saying in a way, it's saving money, making things more targeted. I think that's the core message.

Liz Allan  [00:57:03]:
It is.

Ben Marks [00:57:04]:
There, there is a little supplementary

Liz Allan  [00:57:06]:
Go for it.

Ben Marks [00:57:06]:
Which is systems thinking. Because we are or we will soon be at this point where we can't just be selling heat pumps, we can't just be considering heat pumps. If you're selling EVs, you can't just be considering cars because we're creating an ecosystem, an electrification ecosystem. And so if you're interested in systems thinking as well, what your product and how it sort of has repercussions on other products and vice versa, then, again, you know, the subscription to Hets is quite useful because we speak to it.

Liz Allan  [00:57:46]:
Well, it's been really, really interesting talking to you. I love doing these conversations with people. Do you know I love all of these conversations I have with people? It's just so enlightening and so interesting, and I really, really appreciate your time, Ben. It's lovely, so I will share your kind of all of your links and things like that in the show notes. They will be in there, and if there's anything specific you want me to add, you know, then please, please let me know, and we'll talk about it. We'll talk about it separately. But just to say thank you. It's been absolutely, yeah, really, really insightful, and I hope everybody's got something out of this. I'm sure that I'm sure they would do.

Liz Allan  [00:58:29]:
So I'm gonna finish and say to everybody, as I do every week, please like, subscribe, share all of our posts, and let people know about this. And, yeah, we're on LinkedIn. The Electric Evolution podcast has got its own little page. Just follow us on there. And to everybody watching and listening, I'm gonna say thank you to Ben, and thanks to all of you. Bye.

Ben Marks [00:58:54]: