Comment: We can't control the situation in the Middle East, but we can control our energy use

First it was the war in Ukraine, now we await the true impact of the tense situation of the Middle East on our household finances.

The good news is, that for the immediate future, the impact will be limited. The energy price cap was reduced this month, and as summer approaches, we can expect to be using less energy anyway. Besides, the petrol on our forecourts and gas supplying our boilers was bought and paid for long before the latest crisis. The real difficulty is likely to come later in the year.

We can only hope that by then the crisis will have been settled, that oil will be allowed to move freely, and some degree of normality will finally be restored. But, as the events of the past few days have shown, we would be unwise to take that for granted.

We can’t control the actions of the Iranian government, the US president, or the Israeli Defence Force. What we can control is how we use fuel in our own households, and minimise waste to keep costs down as much as possible.

In this newspaper today, we publish a series of tips on how to cut our bills by reducing our energy use. Tips like drying our clothes on the washing line rather than in the dryer, using a lower temperature for our laundry, or changing to low energy lightbulbs may not be as exciting as heat pumps and solar panels, but they can make a real difference for very little outlay.

And the way things are at the moment, every little helps.