Air quality ‘a matter of life and death’, says Eon CEO

As concern grows about the quality of air we breathe, Eon UK's CEO Michael Lewis reveals why energy efficiency must now become a national infrastructure priority

It’s 2019 and ‘climate change’ has become the ‘climate emergency’.

Ever more intense and extreme heatwaves in Europe and devastating forest fires in the Amazon are prompting not only a summer of climate strikes but hopefully greater public engagement in the issues we face and how we can come together to tackle them.

Closer to home, fears about how our behaviour is impacting the planet is manifesting itself as the growing public concern about the quality of the air we breathe.

Public Health England (PHE) has declared poor air quality as the largest environmental risk to public health in the UK.

The World Health Organisation has shown how long-term exposure to air pollution reduces life expectancy, causes cardiovascular problems, respiratory diseases and lung cancer.

And PHE has found that even short-term exposure to elevated levels of air pollution can cause a range of health problems, including exacerbation of asthma, increases in respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, and even mortality.

To put it bluntly, it’s a matter of life and death.

And though the challenge might initially seem insurmountable, the actions of individuals and organisations can make a real difference to air pollution levels. And I believe because energy can be at the heart of solving the problem, it is for our industry to make this possible.

That’s why we launched a new campaign calling on government and industry to come together and help implement policies and drive wholesale change in how we power our communities, homes, businesses and transport systems.

At home and at work
The connection between air pollution and the energy we use at home or work isn’t always obvious. Nevertheless, the way in which we heat our homes can ultimately impact local air quality.

One of the principal forms of indoor air pollution is particulate matter (PM) which is produced by many forms of home heating including gas boilers, the dominant form of heating in the UK’s 28 million homes, which means improving the energy efficiency of millions of houses, and transforming how we live in them, will translate to a direct lowering of pollutants.

Energy efficiency should be made a national infrastructure priority and, above all, we must give people the power to improve their homes to make them as efficient as possible.

Whether this is helping people to convert to new, more efficient heating systems or insulating their home properly on an aggregate level, air pollution could be improved if we waste less heat, promote low emissions sources of heating and crucially switch to zero-emissions electricity.

In our places of work, business rates should be used to incentivise owners to invest in energy efficiency and reduce emissions from their buildings. What businesses do on the roads can have just as much impact as what happens in the workplace, so encouraging businesses to electrify their vehicle fleets has to be a huge priority.

Towns and transport
More obvious is the impact of transport on air pollution levels, particularly in our towns and cities. We’re calling for an immediate focus on tackling roadside emissions and, crucially, the government should bring forward the ban on petrol and diesel vehicles to 2030 with tighter emissions standards for manufacturers to increase sales of electric vehicles.

When it comes to electric vehicle uptake, we have to address other barriers to entry like range anxiety by ensuring all new homes are built with smart charging units as standard. The upfront cost of buying EVs should be reduced through extending existing government grants and increasing the availability of second-hand electric vehicles.

Ultimately Fuel Duty should be replaced with a tax regime that targets the issue of air pollution directly, encouraging fewer miles to be driven and supporting people in choosing vehicles that have less of an impact on local air quality.

Finally, there also needs to be a greater number of strict Clean Air Zones where only battery electric vehicles would be allowed to drive free-of-charge – particularly around schools and hospitals.

These zones should be using the wealth of data available to better analyse local air quality which can in turn support campaigns to increase public awareness of air pollution levels, so people can take steps to avoid hot spot areas.

Let’s clear the air together.

The clean air crisis is now a much bigger public health risk than smoking or drinking. It does not respect political or institutional boundaries – nor does it doesn’t discriminate in terms of age or lifestyle, but it does tend to disproportionately impact the more deprived areas of our towns and cities.

This means, above all, social justice has to be a core element of the policy solution and low-income households must not be priced out of making sustainable decisions.

Our suggestions above are just the starting gun. There is much more that needs to be done to make the air cleaner which will require additional public spending alongside regulations that help to address the worst polluting industries and send clear signals to the market about the need for new innovative products.

We simply must act now, or future generations have already put us on notice that they will hold us responsible for the crises they will be forced to suffer.

• Michael Lewis will be joining our New Deal for Utilities Debate panel in Westminster on Wednesday (25 September).
• He will also be speaking at Utility Week Congress in October.