No end to the energy challenges

Mervyn Pilley examines how the reorganisation of government departments might affect the energy sector, and why businesses need to know what further support they might get with energy bills

As I come towards the end of my fourth year at ESTA there continues to be no end to the major changes, challenges and crises going on around us. While things have at least calmed down a little at the top of the political chain with no change in Prime Minister or Chancellor for a few months, there is certainly no shortage of things going on relating to the economy and, importantly from the ESTA viewpoint, the energy sector.
As I write this column the Prime Minister has achieved an agreement with the EU to address the Northern Ireland protocol. However, it would appear that there is still some way to go before devolved Government restarts at Stormont. It would appear from this action from the Prime Minister may indicate a desire, at least from him, to move the post-Brexit trade debate forwards. This will be something on my mind as I visit Rimini at the end of the month for the K.ey energy show to help UK suppliers of energy efficiency solutions find potential overseas clients and suppliers. If we believe that the UK leads the way on the technology and innovation front then we need to prove it though good old fashioned trade event activity.
On the energy front, the price of gas has been dropping and Ofgem has announced a drop of £1,000 in the price cap. At the same time energy bills are still likely to go up as the support from Government drops although, again as I write the column, the debate about whether the support will go or be retained is still raging. It is likely we will have to wait for the budget for confirmation. There is still an urgent need for businesses in all sectors to understand what support, if any, they are going to get after the end of the month.
The way the wind is currently blowing it does look very likely that there will be many more business failures this year. One such failure, Britishvolt, is going to be purchased by an Australian company. For the workforce this is good news albeit it would appear that the business will not be producing EV batteries. This will still leave the UK significantly under prepared for the much-needed scaling up of battery production to meet the transition to EVs.
On the positive side, the joint chairs of the new energy efficiency taskforce have been named and its terms of reference published. The Government has also announced that it is putting out to tender an energy advisory service for SME businesses. I am very pleased that this is happening as it also gives me a chance to reconnect the dots with both the SME Energy Alliance and Commercial Energy Efficiency Alliance projects. There is going to be a great deal of work needed from all sides to scale up the energy efficiency work being undertaken in the UK and a hard pressed SME sector will certainly require a lot of hand holding. We are looking forward to playing a very active part on behalf of our members at the taskforce.
Another positive step forward, at least in part, was the breakup of BEIS into four departments. In previous lives I used to have a lot of involvement with the Department of Trade & Industry and then Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. When I joined ESTA in 2019 I remember stating, to whoever would listen, that shoehorning energy into BIS to create BEIS was true madness as all that would happen would be that energy would not get anything like the attention from Government it deserved. The ‘Business’ part of the department, mainly in the form of trade deals post Brexit, was hogging the limelight. I was certainly proved right and unfortunately all the events of 2022 proved how little policy focus energy had received. It did mean a great deal of urgent catch up was needed, much of which is still going on.
What I am really struggling to understand is why the 2016 change was simply not reversed by recreating DECC instead of making things ultra-complicated by a) creating four departments out of one and b) putting the words ‘security’ and ‘net zero’ in the title. Far too many people don’t really understand Net Zero and HMG has proven on many occasions that it doesn’t get the fundamental truth that energy efficiency is, as the first fuel, both a supply and a security issue. History will tell us how successful the changes proved.
I hope readers won’t mind me repeating my call last month for help on us getting case studies relating to behaviour change focused energy efficiency projects. We know just how important behaviour change is in relation to energy efficiency and as part of the evidence we are gathering to convince everyone of this the more case studies we can get together the better. It doesn’t matter what format they are in or even how old the case study is, if you are happy for us to feature your efforts as part of our EnCO programme then please get in touch with me at mervyn@estaenergy.org.uk

• Mervyn Pilley is executive director of ESTA (Energy Services and Technology Association)