Deben: Government advisors don’t understand energy efficiency

Resistance from the top echelons of government to a rapid rollout of energy efficiency measures reflects a lack of understanding of the issue, Lord Deben has said.

According to recent reports, including in Utility Week, implementation of the government’s manifesto commitment to spend £9.2 billion on home insulation is being blocked by No 10 Downing Street chief adviser Dominic Cummings due to his concerns that energy efficiency is insufficiently “new or sexy”.

Giving evidence to the Net Zero All Party Parliamentary Group’s virtual inquiry into the post pandemic recovery efforts yesterday (30 June), Committee on Climate Change (CCC) chair Lord Deben said these attitudes reflected the fact that energy efficiency had never been effectively tackled.

“All we have done is talk about it”, he said.

“It is manifestly better not to waste energy than to try to find other ways of generating it.

“If it is true that certain people advising government don’t understand that it seems to me that is a comment on their understanding rather than on the importance of energy efficiency.”

The former Conservative environment secretary said that energy efficiency should be the “absolutely top” priority not only because it is necessary for tackling climate change but because it is geographically and socially fair.

“I cannot think of anything else that has all those advantages.”

He told the online meeting that the CCC will be looking “very carefully” at chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak’s statement on the economy next week.

The peer added that the committee has received a “good response” to its recent letter to the prime minister on how efforts to tackle climate change can contribute to economic recovery.

He also warned the APPG that the CCC’s recommendation to stop sales of internal combustion engines by 2032 should be adopted in order to prevent the UK becoming a “dumping ground” for polluting vehicles.

“If we don’t do this as early as we are proposing we will be a dumping ground for cars from other countries.”

The peer called on the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to set up a mechanism to curb regulations that get in the way of the UK’s broader net-zero goal. As an example, it is “far too hard” to install small hydro power motors in rivers, he said: “Rules and regulations make it impossible but a lot of energy could be harnessed if the rules were changed.”

And Lord Deben criticised what he described as the “ludicrous Heath Robinson mechanism”, which means offshore wind farms must each bring the electricity they have generated onshore, threatening a proliferation of transformer infrastructure in East Anglia’s villages.