Private customers are turning down the heating and cutting back on showers, with gas consumption down by between 20% and 25% since September 1, energy company Eneco said on Friday.

The company has some two million customers. Of them, 230,000 have a smart meter and they show that the central heating has been put down in many homes by one or two degrees, Eneco said. ‘Of course we don’t know if this will continue when it gets colder,’ a spokesman told the Volkskrant.

The three other big energy firms,  Essent, Vattenfall and Budget Energie, did not have figures available, the VK said.

This summer, national statistics agency CBS said it estimated gas consumption had fallen 16% in the first half of the year, although this was partly due to the mild winter.

Experts say the reduction in gas use is not surprising, given the current high prices, but some warn that may change when the price cap kicks in in January.

‘You often see that with financial incentives,’ Groningen University researcher Thijs Bouman told the paper. ‘But it remains to be seen if the drop is still so significant when gas becomes cheaper again.’

The temperature has also been turned down from 21 Celsius to 19 Celsius in most government offices.

The government launched a campaign to boost energy saving in April, so that the Netherlands would become less reliant on Russian gas.

Have you turned down your heating, or perhaps not put it on yet, or taken any other steps to cut your energy use? Or has your energy bill gone up massively? We’d like to hear from you for an article. Email editor@dutchnews.nl