Whatever happened to the first energy priority?

A new government department designed to deliver net zero seems to be ignoring the strategic role energy efficiency could and should play

The cheapest and most environmentally friendly energy is the energy we can avoid using in the first place. That has long been an uncontroversial bipartisan truth, endorsed by every Government, and indeed every serious opposition party.
So, in theory, the creation of a new Government department specifically named as, and charged with, delivering energy security and net zero, ought to be running with what the Coalition Government of 2010 to 2015 routinely described as the “first energy priority.”
But all the evidence is that, ever since this Department was founded, it has entirely deprioritised plans to promote greater investment in energy efficiency.
Consider. As fuel prices soared internationally, a new government White Paper on energy security was published with great fanfare. Other Governments throughout Europe initiated similar policy developments. Without exception, these emphasised strongly the role that reducing wasteful consumption could play in delivering energy security. This led to overall reductions across the European Union in gas consumption of 19.3 per cent.
In contrast, the UK government managed a minimal drop of 1 per cent in gas consumption. Last year, the International Monetary Fund had specifically warned that UK households were more exposed to the energy price crisis than any others in western Europe, due to the nation’s energy-inefficient buildings.
The UK White Paper ran to 137 pages, but nonetheless failed to include any acknowledgment at all of any strategic role that energy efficiency could, let alone should, play in delivering greater energy security. It ensured that the lights stayed on – even if they were all still incandescent, rather than LEDs.
Achieving net zero by 2050, as the International Energy Agency keeps reminding us, needs to be delivered every bit as much by cutting out wastage as by altering the kind of fuel consumed. It does seem that this fact has got lost in the new Department, where the entire concentration on achieving “net zero” seems to be based upon switching fuels.
The winning manifesto at the 2019 General Election committed the Government to spending just £9.3bn across five years on promoting energy efficiency. It may manage £6bn if lucky.
In 2020 Green Homes Grants were introduced, with an annual budget of £1.5bn, providing funds to install energy-saving measures. Subsequently, a scathing National Audit Office reported that, because these grants were skewed so heavily towards installing heat pumps (of which just 30,000 were being put in annually), instead of more established measures like better glazing or new LEDs, little of the money was spent before the programme was abandoned overnight without warning. Much as the earlier Green Deal scheme had been, just after the Coalition Government ended.
Subsequently, a grants programme has been reinstated – with a far lower budget. But now excluding the entire building fabric, only subsidising heat pumps.
Indeed DECNZ has just concluded a public consultation, via a press release called: “Boost to heat pump rollout, with plans for cheaper and easier installation.” Tellingly, its fourth paragraph promises: “Households could also save time and money through a simplified approach to qualifying for a heat pump grant, by removing the need to install loft or cavity wall insulation.”
Previously, Government had always argued that if you want to reduce fuel bills at home, the first thing any householder should do is to insulate and double glaze the building, so as to minimise the amount of energy needed to be purchased. This is called the “fabric first” principle, endorsed by practically every recognised building specialist.
It is absurd that, in this drive to remove gas and oil boilers, every householder now seem overtly to be being discouraged by DESNZ from making financial savings by improving the fabric of the buildings they occupy.
Were this purblind policy change to be implemented, the UK Government could be falling into the same trap that the Northern Ireland Executive did 15 years ago, when it introduced its version of the Renewable Heat incentive without making any commensurate requirements for fabric changes from those installing the NIE’s preferred heating mechanisms. The consequent “Cash for Ash” mega-scandal directly prompted a collapse of the then Northern Ireland administration.
This March, the Government did announce with great fanfare a special energy efficiency task force of 15 of the Quite Great and Very Good, charged with “supporting our ambition to reduce total UK energy demand by 15 per cent from 2021 levels by 2030.”
The 2023 taskforce was told to place a particular focus on the role of the private sector and the stimulation of investment. Its priority areas of focus were to include “stimulate the supply chain to address and increase investment, reduce skills gaps, accelerate pathways to accreditation, improve product manufacturing capability, and increase the wider availability of materials required to deliver high quality upgrades at pace.” A further requirement was “identifying barriers and opportunities in existing market and regulatory frameworks to delivering the demand reduction ambition.”
Working at pace, within two months, the taskforce concluded its recommendations. These were forwarded them to DESNZ who responded by unceremoniously sacking the chair and the members, while refusing to publish any word from them.
The former Conservative MP, Laura Sandys, sat on that taskforce. She said she was “disappointed” by the decision to disband it, and “confused about the government’s intentions on the cost of living.”
Ms Sandys, now chair of the Green Alliance, said energy efficiency must be the “first priority to reduce citizens’ costs” and “improve energy security.” Precisely what the Coalition government in which she served kept emphasising.

• Andrew Warren is chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation