Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• IN the warm spring weather it might be nice to sit outside and enjoy a treat in the shade under the parasols at one of the luxurious restaurants around Granary Square, King’s Cross, if you’re lucky enough to have the spare time and cash.

I have noticed recently that a few of these restaurants have outdoor electric heaters continuously switched on under the parasols for hours at a time, even on warm sunny days and when nobody is using the tables.

Maybe leaving the heaters on attracts a bit more trade, or it is too much bother to switch them on and off as customers come and go, or it could just be apathy.

For example, on a lovely warm and sunny morning last week, one restaurant had 20 outdoor heaters continuously on for over an hour with only four or five people using tables during this period.

Assuming the heaters are each 2,000 watts (about average), then 20 heaters on for one hour works out at 40 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity used in that hour. This is equivalent to four average UK households’ total electricity usage for a whole day (the UK household average is 10 kWh per day).

Considering all the other hours these same restaurant parasol heaters were likely left on and unattended, and the restaurants nearby doing a similar thing, this seems dreadfully wasteful.

We are told that we are living in an energy security crisis and that UK consumers are facing huge price increases on energy, goods and services because of this.

Consumers have a responsibility to call out extreme energy negligence like this, and national policies need to be developed and enforced to bring it under control.

As for the developers and landlords at King’s Cross, they should be proactive by influencing their wasteful clients and make good on their own sustainability and environmental claims.

And the fancy restaurants, do they care? Only if their affluent customers do. Perhaps they should put on a jumper and speak up.

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