The Conservative government’s ambition on energy efficiency has fallen into question after evidence emerged that its current aims fall well behind those achieved by the previous government.
Speaking on Tuesday at the Institution of Civil Engineers in London, energy secretary Amber Rudd reiterated her department’s commitment to install energy-saving measures in one million homes over the course of the current parliament.
She said: “More than 1.2 million households are seeing lower bills due to energy efficiency improvements over the last 5 years. We are committed to ensuring a million more get the same benefits by the end of this parliament.”
However, the context of these figures has revealed the low ambition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s (DECC) target compared to the performance of schemes under the last government. According to DECC’s own figures, the 1.2 million properties referred to were treated between June 2013 and March 2015 under the Green Deal and Energy Company Obligation (ECO) schemes.
According to the Association for the Conservation of Energy (ACE), a total of around 4.5 million homes had one or more major measures – efficient boilers, solid or cavity wall insulation and loft insulation – installed under the Coalition government . As well as those improved under ECO and the Green Deal Framework, millions more homes benefitted from the CERT, CESP and Warm Front programmes.
This means DECC’s current goal of one million homes improved over the current parliament is less than a quarter of those improved by major measures under the previous government. In addition, campaign group The Energy Bill Revolution has claimed that if all measures are included – such as draught proofing, improved glazing and other forms of energy-saving products – the government’s commitment “marks a 78% reduction in the number of homes that received support during the last parliament.”
The Energy Bill Revolution added that this amounted to a “catastrophic fall in the number of households helped”.
Commenting on Amber Rudd’s speech, Pedro Guertler, head of research at ACE, said: “We’re relieved energy efficiency got a mention, but disappointed that the secretary of state said so little about it towards the end of her speech. Energy experts, including the International Energy Agency, stress that energy efficiency has got to be the ‘First Fuel’. Amber Rudd wants energy policy to emphasise energy security and affordability objectives more strongly. Energy efficiency is the cheapest and the most swiftly deployable means of achieving these objectives for the long-term, including our carbon targets.
“We’re very concerned that her level of ambition for energy efficiency in homes is [around] 80% lower than what was achieved in the last Parliament. The Government needs urgently to reset its approach to energy efficiency, raise its long-term ambition and make it a national infrastructure priority,” he added.
Since the Conservative government was elected in May, a slew of energy efficiency policies have been scrapped. This has left a number of industry representatives to question the government’s intentions towards energy efficiency.
Speaking at the launch event of the 2015 Local Authority Energy Index, which measures the energy efficiency efforts of 103 authorities across the country, John Sinfield, chief executive of Knauf Insulation and chair of the Construction Products Association, said: “What we’ve seen since this government has come in clearly indicates that they don’t see energy efficiency as a priority. The level of ambition is very low, the supply chain and industry has proven that it can deliver significantly more measures than the government is targeting.
“Government has just signed off on a deal on a new nuclear power station at a ridiculous strike price and yet it’s canned solar PV, it’s canned energy efficiency and it’s canned the Green Deal, all of which cost about £10 on the bill. The cheapest energy is the energy you don’t use. Energy efficiency isn’t going to solve all the problems – it has to be part of the approach. We do need new generating capacity but the line about trying to help hard-working bill payers does seem to be a bit odd to me when you sign up to a [£92.50MWh] strike price yet you stop things which are relatively low cost.”
At the time of publication, DECC had yet to respond to ACE’s figures.
By David Pratt.
