The madness of things goes on

The continual U-turns on policy will have a detrimental effect on the UK’s ability to attract long-term investment for its green industries, believes Mervyn Pilley

The last few weeks have had a surreal feeling to them, something akin to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ politics. We appear to have our prime minister resembling The White Rabbit rushing around telling everyone I’m late, I’m late for a very important (election/conference) date with Alice proffering a bottle labelled ‘vision booster – drink me’ to him.
In all seriousness, recent weeks have been hugely disappointing indeed for those of us who believe passionately in the need to meet net zero targets and, even more so for our members, the need for energy efficiency to be taken seriously as a major part of the solution for both the energy and climate crises.
It is of course to be expected that any Prime Minister under internal pressure from certain groupings of his own MPs and a long way behind in the current opinion polls will do anything he can to remain in power. The period leading up to an election year is always likely to be a challenging one for decisive policy action, especially where there is considered to be a risk of upsetting voters. In many ways the scaling down of net zero policy ambitions did not come as a surprise. That said, it was still very disappointing indeed that the decisions have been taken now on the basis of the cost of living when in reality much of the costs impact were not due to be felt until a number of years ahead. Without a doubt continual U-turning on policies will certainly impact on the likelihood of investment at the scale required by the private sector whether inside or outside of the UK.
With regard to the demise of the energy efficiency taskforce, again this was not totally unexpected. Having ignored much of the expert advice available from ESTA and other membership organisations in the sector and having opted instead for the group membership to consist of the usual ‘great and the good’ in UK plc, the recent loss of the original chair for non-energy related reasons clearly gave the government a good to excuse not to continue with what had been a very ineffective way of creating policy. Taskforces are a bit like strategy documents. They need to be driven by actions and not just words and eye-catching headlines. As always, we remain open to helping government formulate the right policies to implement in relation to energy efficiency, especially in relation to the commercial, non-domestic sector.
On the positive side – yes, there is still the occasional good news story, the recent announcement that the UK is rejoining the Horizon Europe programme is, of course, something to be celebrated. The UK has always had plenty of innovative people and companies and I have met many of them at various trade shows I have attended. With so many challenges hitting us from all sides it is clear that innovative solutions are going to continue to be needed at scale. It has been frustrating that two years of potential funding applications have been lost but we need to push on against the new backdrop as fast as possible.
Lost opportunities seem to be the name of the game at the moment. I was disappointed to get a message recently from DESNZ advising me that the original intention to set up a national SME energy advisory service funding assessments and potential actions has now been scaled back to a regional pilot scheme in just the West Midlands.
One of the critical factors I have highlighted before to allow for the implementation of support services for SME companies is the obvious lack of energy consultants in the UK. We are working on an effective way to tackle this issue as well as seeking to retrain and upskill people through the creation of a new armed services to energy community. This project is aiming to take as many of the excellent people currently leaving the forces, many with highly compatible skill sets and training and helping them find a career in the energy sector. We were not aided in this quest by the mad bureaucracy in place for any organisation looking to get approval for training costs to be funded for individual leavers under the Enhanced Learning Credits Administration Scheme (ELCAS) scheme. In reality the criteria are a total nonsense and the rigidity of the rules meant that we have had to work around this to continue what we regard as an especially important project for a wide range of stakeholders throughout the UK. If any EiBI reader is interested in supporting this project directly or who has good contacts in the military, please let me know at: mervyn@estaenergy.org.uk

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