Onzo Welcomes Energy Initiatives
London, 16th February 2009
On 12th February the Department of Energy and Climate Change, in a major burst of energy of its own, announced new policies in three areas:
- The Heat and Energy Saving Strategy sets out the government’s longer-term ambitions for how we use energy in our homes and businesses
- A Community Energy Savings Programme will seek to develop partnerships to promote energy efficiency standards and permanently reduce fuel bills
- The existing Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) is to be amended and will, for the first time, encourage energy suppliers to promote Real Time Energy Display devices by ensuring displays qualify as contributions to the suppliers’ obligation to meet carbon reduction commitments.
DECC is to consult on all these policies and Onzo will be responding as part of that process. In principle, however, we warmly welcome these initiatives, which contain elements for which we have long been arguing.
The inclusion of energy displays within CERT is something on which we have made frequent representations, and the recognition by DECC that “displays that work with existing electricity meters have the potential to help customers reduce energy consumption and deliver early carbon savings in advance of the roll-out of smart meters” closely mirrors what we have said in our submissions. Last September, in a paper to the Green Homes Council, for example, we argued: ” the widest official encouragement for the use of energy displays in homes, at national and local level, will provide a straightforward, cost effective and generally acceptable means of contributing to the objective that by the end of the next decade all householders will have been offered help to introduce energy efficiency measures with the aim that…all homes will have achieved their …efficiency potential”.
The emphasis on community based energy efficiency measures also strikes a chord with Onzo. As the government’s Climate Change Committee has pointed out, emissions from residential buildings have been growing steadily for 20 years, and are currently responsible for 37 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions. In September the government secured a commitment from the energy companies to spend £910m over three years on energy efficiency, but large as this sum sounds it will not in fact go far. It will probably improve the insulation of somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 homes in each of the three years – a drop in the ocean when there are around 22.5 million homes in the UK. Of these 8.5m have unfilled cavity walls and 12m have inadequately insulated lofts or no loft insulation at all. A very great deal remains to be done, therefore.
The government now recognises structural changes are needed and that financial mechanisms must be provided which spread the cost of energy efficiency improvements over time, so that the costs are more than offset by saving on bills.
Onzo has proposed a specific solution to this, based on initiatives increasingly common in the United States whereby all energy efficiency improvements would be financed by local authority loans repaid through the council tax.
Yesterday’s papers do not go so far as to propose such a scheme, but recognition that the cost and benefits of energy efficiency improvements must remain with the property rather than with the owner is major step in the right direction and Onzo will be developing its arguments on this further in its responses to the consultation.
Details of the Heat and Energy Saving Programme are here.
Details of Community Energy Savings Programme are here.
Details of CERT are here.