The history making continues
As ESTA celebrates its 40thbirthday, Mervyn Pilley explains how the organisation is preparing to adapt to the future demands of a fast-changing energy market
On September 8 we held our first ever hybrid members meeting and our 2022 AGM. At the suggestion of the members present we tuned into hear the brand-new Prime Minister make her announcement of the energy support mechanisms. As her speech unfolded news came through that the Queen was unwell and members of the Royal family were on their way to Balmoral. The rest is, of course, history.
The meeting itself covered a wide-ranging discussion around a reorganisation of ESTA. This focused on how a 40-year-old trade association could look to reflect more accurately what is going on in the energy world today. My wide-ranging proposals included setting up a number of new groups looking at areas where ESTA has not traditionally ventured but where there appears to be a gap in the support mechanisms available. The proposed groups include microgeneration, cyber security, AI in construction, demand side response and commercial retrofit. The intention is that these will be more informally structured groups than the current existing four groups in ESTA. I would stress that these groups will continue. One of my underlying reasons for looking at the structure was tied into my feeling that end users/customers are, more than ever, looking for end-to-end solutions, and in addition more ESTA members are starting to operate in a number of different areas of the sector to those they have traditionally occupied.
The other aspect of creating more groups is a desire to broaden out our existing council both in terms of numbers and also sector experience and expertise. Running a trade association in a rapidly changing environment. At the moment the statement ‘rapidly changing’ is something of an understatement. It is getting harder to keep up with all aspects of what is going on. A larger council should help me to deal with that aspect of the role. It is vitally important that ESTA continues to get feedback from its members. The current situation is that we will be circulating a ‘green paper’ on the proposed changes to all members with a view to implementing the new more inclusive ESTA for 2023.
I mentioned the statement by Liz Truss on the 8th September. Regular readers of this column will know how passionate I am in supporting the SME market. The major concern to me is that while businesses and other non-residential users have been promised six months of support on energy prices the situation after that period is still incredibly vague. There is just a promise that the Secretary of State will be carrying out a review of which sectors will be deemed worthy of ongoing support. It is impossible to see how businesses in a post pandemic, post Brexit World are expected to plan for their business continuity for just six months ahead. This reaffirms the view of many that a complete lack of understanding about how businesses operate in the real world is sadly lacking from the Ministerial knowledge bank.
There have also been a lot of rumours circulating that the new Cabinet is planning to put on hold the energy security bill that was already in process. The general consensus is that this would not necessarily be a bad thing if the Government wanted to bring in more of the things it missed when drafting the bill – especially with regards to a national retrofit plan and far more focus on energy efficiency measures. Regrettably, for humankind and our planet, it would seem that instead the reason for delay is so that the Government can explore restarting fracking, delaying the creation of more solar energy supply, and trying to ensure that nuclear power stations are kept open.
As I am writing this the start of a Net Zero review process has been announced with the focus being on ensuring that businesses are not being disadvantaged by our 2050 goal for Net Zero. I can only express my feelings that this is completely starting from the wrong end. Surely the whole point of all of the collaboration activity that took place leading up to COP26 involving the business sector was that they had a vital role to play and in general it was recognised that doing the right thing for the environment would give businesses a competitive edge going forward. I suspect that the new review is going to seek to damage much of the good work done last year and give UK plc ‘permission’ to stop worrying about reaching Net Zero targets if it in any way threatens their profits and investment plans. Hugely disappointing and also of great concern for our ‘report card’ due to be submitted for COP27.
I have already mentioned that the meeting we held on the eighth was a hybrid event with equal numbers of members attending physically and virtually. It would appear that the appetite for certain types of physical events has returned but frustratingly the jury still is out on whether this applies to all events or just exhibitions. If any readers are happy to share their thoughts on this topic, please email me at mervyn@estaenergy.org.uk
• Mervyn Pilley is executive director of ESTA (Energy Systems & Technology Association)
