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April 10, 2008 - Real Time Displays

I sometimes wonder if BERR is a Department with a death wish – the death in question being its reputation when it comes to addressing climate change, fuel poverty, energy efficiency and other key sustainability issues. There’s some kind of fundamental perversity in the way it sets about dealing with these issues that it is almost impossible to account for. Even in the small things – like smart meters and real time displays (RTDs).

In both Energy White Paper and in its Climate Change Programme Report to Parliament, the Government unambiguously pledged that it would mandate all energy supply companies to provide RTDs for electricity to any customer who asked for one. The policy was expected to result in around 2.5 million customers asking for an RTD, at a cost of around £37 million. Available evidence suggests that energy savings of between 5% to 15% could be achieved by customers who acquire an RTD, especially as these are likely to be the most energy-conscious consumers.

Indeed, the Climate Change Programme confidently identified savings of 0.2 MtC to come from “improved billing and metering by 2010”. But there’s no other policy in place to achieve this apart from the “free RTD on request” policy.

All clear so far. But this is where it starts to go wrong. BERR is now seeking to weaken the RTD commitment to one where supply companies would not be required to send consumers an RTD on request. BERR now favours a roll-out of what are known as ‘smart meters’.

Smart meters do a lot more than RTDs. They could, potentially, give suppliers or consumers a greater choice of tariffs, accurate monthly bills, and much more useful real time information for gas as well as electricity. So the Sustainable Development Commission fully supports the Government’s desire to get smart meters into all households, as a necessary step to the development of a number of carbon-saving measures.

However, there will inevitably be serious delays in putting that policy into practice (a roll-out could take up to 10 years before the majority of households received a smart meter, at a cost of several billion pounds), delays which will undermine enthusiastic customers from better understanding their energy demand.

BERR at its worst all over again. A typical lack of consistency, clarity and real leadership. So our message to BERR is a simple one: this is not an either or situation. We need RTDs now, and smart meters over the next few years. Stop taking orders from the energy supply companies by going back on your commitment to compel them to provide RTDs. Stick to your guns. Get it right – for once.

Posted by Mariam Saleemi on April 10, 2008 5:34 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

April 15, 2008 - Review of Sub National Economic Development and Regeneration… Part II

There is a remote possibility that I am just a touch obsessed with this particular bit of Government process, in which case apologies to those who are not touched by any such obsession. But I feel I have duty to update.

Previous SNR instalments have portrayed this innocuous-sounding review of economic growth and development at the regional level as a bit of a horror story – along the following lines:

"This Treasury-inspired confection popped out in July last year, after minimal consultation with either Defra or CLG, heralding the most radical changes in the English regions since the Regional Development Agencies were brought into being in 1999.

There was no serious reference to sustainable development, and no reference to the imperative of securing a low-carbon economy. It had one principal purpose: to get the English Regions and local authorities to focus on accelerated economic growth, including increased housing numbers. Out go those sad old Regional Assemblies, now deemed unfit for that particular purpose, with their regional planning functions to be dumped on the RDAs, even though they themselves are demonstrably unfit for such a role, lacking as they do any kind of democratic accountability. To describe the Sub National Review (or SNR) as a dog’s dinner is an insult to the culinary expectations of any self-respecting canine. "

I can’t attribute developments since then solely to the Sustainable Development Commission’s ire on the SNR, but a consultation document that was due out before Christmas 2007 somehow got delayed until April 2nd (under the friendlier title ‘Prosperous Places’) largely as a consequence of some pretty serious inter-departmental argy-bargy. So congratulations are due to all those who have been working so hard over the last few weeks to civilise this wretched document – a pretty good job done.

There will now be the usual 12 weeks for people to feed back their reactions and ideas, which might just conceivably lead to a little bit more civilising along the way.

The Sustainable Development Commission will obviously be producing its own response – just as soon as possible, to help inform others keen to get stuck in here. Fortunately, we’ll have plenty of good things to say (the whole tone of ‘Prosperous Places’, is completely different from the original, with none of the arrogance and macho-growthism), and many of the proposals about a new integrated regional strategy are very sound. But none of the serious governance issues have as yet been properly addressed. Regional Development Agencies will still take over the regional planning functions, once the Regional Assemblies have been put down, even though their Boards will remain ‘business-led’.

And then there’s all the rest of the original SNR that isn’t being consulted on at the moment. How much of that is the Government just going to try and sneak through? What happens, for instance, to the aggressive commitments the original makes to sweep away all other high-level targets for the RDAs apart from a “single over-arching growth objective”, including delivering on housing numbers?

Maybe that too has been consigned to some deep Treasury dustbin – to be replaced (miracle of miracles!) by a commitment to the following definition of “sustainable economic growth” to be found in a footnote in ‘Prosperous Places’:

“Sustainable economic growth is economic growth that can be sustained and is within environmental limits but also enhancing the environment and social welfare, and avoids greater extremes in future economic cycles.”

Clearly not the work of a lover of the subtleties of the English language, but just great to be getting along with!

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Posted by JP on April 15, 2008 3:52 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 29, 2008 - Boris and Ken

Writing entirely in my personal capacity (ie without any Government, charitable or business hat on), I am bound to say that nothing I have heard over the last few weeks has in any way diminished my sense of horror at the prospect of Boris as Mayor of London. He may well be a cyclist, an enthusiast for tree-planting, and indeed the son of Stanley Johnson (who is a serious environmentalist), but pro-Boris ‘greenies’ really should wake up and smell the elitist, growthist, consumerist, hedonist, gas-guzzling, contrarian brand of ‘green’ that Boris represents.

Of course Ken hasn’t got it all right (in fact I find it hard to understand how he’s let Boris even begin to threaten him on Thursday), his political instincts are sometimes totally off the wall, and he can be arrogant and idiotically offensive. But having spent a lifetime, literally, observing politicians getting to grips with sustainable development, my headline conclusion is that Ken is one of the few I’ve seen with some real vision as to the way in which sustainable development can transform people’s lives in practice, and some real courage in taking on vested interests and doing the difficult things that most politicians wouldn’t touch.

In politics, as in everything else, you have got to look beyond the messy minutiae of just keeping things trucking along, to some sense of a higher purpose. And in our world of sustainable development, Ken’s got that, Boris hasn’t. End of story.

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Posted by JP on April 29, 2008 9:21 AM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 29, 2008 - Good News Week

It’s a bit gloomy out there at the moment: climate change, food shortages, very high oil prices, the credit crunch, impending recession – little wonder that people are beginning to look as downcast as our Prime Minister must be feeling.

Against the odds, however, last week was stuffed to the gills with good news as far as I was concerned. To start with, I spoke at a conference organised by a little office supplies company in Cheltenham (called The Commercial Group), where more than 250 other small businesses were regaled with what is one of the most inspiring case studies of a company going from almost nowhere to being a serious player in just 2 years. They also heard from the redoubtable Eugenie Harvey, of “Save the World for a Fiver” fame, who I reckon could cheer up even Jim Lovelock in his gloomiest “Death of Gaia” moments.

Then I went to open a state-of-the-art new building near Stroud, where a group of companies collectively known as The Green Shop Group are being re-housed. “If you want to change the world, you must begin from where you are”, says Roger Budgeon, Founder of The Green Shop, and the modest, unassuming inspiration behind this amazing initiative. Check it out – and if you have ever despaired at getting alternative building and DIY products, I guarantee that you’ll find them there.

At the start of the week, the 2008 Queen’s Awards for Enterprise were announced and included in the Sustainable Development category are two of the outstanding exemplars of year-on-year corporate excellence on all things sustainable (namely, Wessex Water and BT), as well as (somewhat less predictably!) Permanent Publications, publisher of the wonderful Permaculture Magazine, which was launched in the UK in 1992 with a reach of just 600 people, and now has more than 100,000 readers all over the world.

artistsimpression.jpgAnd lastly, sitting on a train checking emails, I found myself bursting out with laughter at an email from my colleagues on the South West Regional Development Agency, informing us that no less a global figure than George Bush had explicitly name-checked a big wave project the RDA is investing in off the coast of Cornwall, called Wave Hub. My cup positively overflowed at the knowledge that even George is now out there routing for renewable energy schemes in places he’s probably never even heard of!

Picture: Artists impression of the Wave Hub by www.ind-art.co.uk

Posted by JP on April 29, 2008 2:27 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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