Don’t panic... Miliband cold tea plan was an April Fool’s

In Britain, life’s essentials consist of food, shelter – and tea. A steaming cuppa sustains us through the winter months and even on the hottest day of the year, the first thing we do in the morning is put the kettle on.

But now tea and coffee lovers are being encouraged to drink their favourite brew cold under drastic plans drawn up by Ed Miliband to combat the energy crisis.

The Energy Secretary hopes people will switch to iced tea and coffee, or simply cold tea and coffee, to cut the UK’s electricity consumption. Boiling kettles for the 200 million cups of tea and coffee that we get through each day accounts for up to 2 per cent of the nation’s entire electricity use.

A public information campaign using messages such as “Iced is Nice” and “Hot? Not!” will be rolled out on social media after being designed by the Government’s behavioural science unit.

Opposition MPs, however, believe it could be a first step towards an outright ban on hot beverages to help Mr Miliband reach his net zero targets.

The drive has been likened to Gordon Brown’s advice to the public to shut their curtains to keep the cold out, which was compared to an April Fool’s prank by some critics.

If the public rejects the idea of cold tea, ministers are discussing even more draconian plans to ration electricity.

The Telegraph has learnt that one proposal involves households with odd and even house numbers taking it in turns to keep their lights off at night.

Known as a “half blackout”, it would mean 50 per cent of the country being left in the dark on alternate nights, and could be enforced by volunteer wardens, last seen in the Second World War, who would be given the power to march up and down residential streets shouting: “Put that light out!”

Discussions have even included what to do about houses that have a name rather than a number, with the first letter of the house name determining whether it is odd or even. For example, a house called Dunroamin starts with the fourth letter of the alphabet, so that would count as an even number. House names that start with “The” would use the first letter of the second word, so that The Gables would be an odd number, as G is the 7th letter of the alphabet.
Other suggestions that have come out of the behavioural science team, known as the “nudge” unit, include encouraging people to grow their hair longer to keep their heads warm, and using dogs and cats as foot warmers instead of boiling the kettle for a hot water bottle.

When The Telegraph asked whether Mr Miliband would consider granting licences to open up new North Sea oil and gas fields to combat the energy crisis instead, a government spokesman said: “You must be joking.”