New Secretary of State launches Energy Efficiency Deployment Office

 

Originally announced back last May as the Office for National Energy Efficiency (see EiBI May 2010), this new Office has already had a chequered history in reaching the official launch pad. – quite apart from its name change.

DECC ministers – noticeably Davey’s predecessor, Chris Huhne, and the Climate Change minister, Greg Barker, had obviously rather greater ambitions for the Office than did some of their senior civil servants.

The Ministers’ vision perceived the Office as being a visible campaigner right across Whitehall, fighting to combat policies that might deter energy efficiency investments. They also envisaged the Office as a potential game-changer within the Department itself, historically dominated by energy supply interests.

Ministers were seeking both a high-profile chair and a director, drawn possibly from outside the civil service but certainly from outside DECC. At the launch, the new director was announced as David Purdy, formerly a deputy director within DECC dealing with parts of the Green Deal.

No EEDO chair was present, or even announced. This is despite a detailed search having been undertaken by headhunters Saxton Bampfylde, beginning last August. It is understood that at least two possible candidates had been endorsed by senior civil servants but were rejected as unsuitable by ministers.

The new Office has launched with a public consultation exercise. This is restricted to asking some very basic questions about the market potential and perceived barriers to action for energy efficiency. In every case, these questions mirror requests for information that have frequently been sought in various previous consultation exercises by government before. As one well-known energy efficiency commentator drily observed: “If they didn’t have this information in spades already, you have to question what the relevant civil servants have been basing energy efficiency policy upon these last twenty years?”