Interview: Greg Barker, Climate change minister

“Labour has injected a degree of partisan politics into the energy efficiency debate that we haven’t seen for decades.”

Greg Barker’s 2013 was busier than even he would have anticipated at this time last year. Not only did the climate change minister bring the Green Deal and the Energy Company Obligation into the world – to replace the Carbon Emission Reduction Target (Cert) and the Community Energy Saving Programme (Cesp) schemes – but he has also had to do his part in fighting off claims from Labour that the coalition government is failing to deal with the “cost of living crisis”. In particular, he and the rest of the government have struggled to counter Labour leader Ed Miliband’s promise to freeze energy prices for 20 months should Labour win the 2015 general election.
One phrase that has come back to haunt Barker was a comment made on BBC Radio 4 in March on the Green Deal. “If we don’t have 10,000 (plans) by the end of the year, I’ll be having sleepless nights,” he said.
At the end of November, the Green Deal had only managed to get 458 plans installed, with an additional 1,020 plans either accepted by or signed by homeowners.
Unless Santa brought a few thousand people a Green Deal for Christmas, it looks as though Barker’s 10,000 plan goal is going to be missed.
Speaking to Utility Week in late December, the minister accepted that the government’s flagship energy efficiency scheme had not gone “as anticipated”, but denied the  opposition accusation that the Green Deal has been a failure.
Barker even goes as far as to say that “it has been very successful”.
“We know there has been extremely positive feedback from the 120,000 families that have had the Green Deal assessment, and over 80 per cent of them are already, or are currently, or are intending, to install measures as a result of that Green Deal assessment.
“So the Green Deal market is being mobilised and the SME [small and medium-sized enterprise] supply chain is up and running and the measures are being installed.”
The only surprise with the rollout of the Green Deal over the past 12 months, Barker says, is that “fewer than were expected have actually taken advantage of Green Deal finance in order to install the measures”.
He adds: “That in itself is not a problem. We are not here to sell finance packages, we are here to mobilise the insulation with private resources of energy efficiency.”
The key point Barker pushes is that it doesn’t matter how household energy usage is reduced, as long as it is reduced.
“Green Deal finance is the means and not the end – the end is the installation of Green Deal measures.
“There’s more to Green Deal than [the finance].
“The Green Deal is a Green Deal assessment, which recommends a set of Green Deal measures to retrofit your home to Green Deal standards installed by Green Deal approved measures.”
However, Barker is not resting on his laurels. Notwithstanding his confidence that the scheme has “mobilised” the insulation market (with small operators apparently showing the big suppliers how it should be done),  he says “a number of technical changes”  will be made to the Green Deal to boost take up.
“In January we will be launching ‘Green Deal in a day’, which reduces some of the bureaucracy and paperwork, making it easier for people to sign up for finance.
“We will also be making a number of software improvements, a number of technical changes; individually nothing particularly seismic, but are the sorts of improvements that will make a real difference.”
There are three “important developments” that Barker and the ministerial staff at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) will unveil in 2014 to help boost the scheme.
The first of these will be a stamp duty rebate – worth up to £1,000 – for new homebuyers, which will be introduced in the spring, and Barker is confident this will “drive customer demand”.
The second significant update for the Green Deal in 2014 will be the street-by-street rollout off the scheme in conjunction with local authorities, while the chancellor has also trebled the size of the communities’ fund for the scheme.
The third area of improvement – and one that will potentially open up a significant new market for the energy efficiency scheme – is that the government has “cracked the teething problems around the private rented sector”.
Issues surrounding legal definitions of the Green Deal have been “sorted” Barker states with a smile, “and now we’re in a position to rollout the private rented sector offer and that’s going to be a big thing”.
With a sense of reality, and potentially wanting to avoid a repeat of the “sleepless night” comment, Barker says: “It is slow but sure. We’re not forecasting a runaway train but we’ve got a very good base and strong supply chain to build on.”
The shadow Decc team will be watching closely how these changes affect the take-up of the Green Deal, and be ready to jump on any signs of weakness. They have had some success in stirring things up for the government and will continue to try and set the political agenda within the energy realm.
Labour leader Ed Miliband thrust energy into the spotlight in September with his keynote speech at the end of the Labour party conference, during which he promised to freeze energy bills. It was a deftly timed move, coming just  as the big six energy suppliers were due to announce their annual price rises. Some of them duly came in at 10 per cent or more, doing Miliband a massive favour.
Unsurprisingly, Barker is annoyed at the talk that Miliband is leading the energy agenda and that the coalition is struggling to regain the ground it lost in the autumn.
The climate change minister fires back that Miliband is treating the energy debate as a political football right at a time when stability and consensus is essential.
“I think Labour has injected a degree of partisan politics into the energy efficiency debate that we haven’t seen for almost decades.
“It’s certainly the first time in my time in politics, and I came into the house in 2001.
“I think there’s some blatant politicking. It unsettles the supply chain and is bad for investment. But we want to get past that. I hope common sense will prevail.”
Barker highlights the “unprecedented long-term stability” that prime minister David Cameron has introduced into the sector by extending the Energy Company Obligation (Eco) to 2017.
“I think the Green Deal, Eco and the energy efficiency agenda actually emerge much stronger for it and we now have real long-term certainty around these policies because they’re affordable as well as sustainable.”
All the debate in Westminster, all the changes to the various policies and promises about prices and competition, are all well and good, but for many homeowners energy remains a grudge purchase and something they only think about once a month when the bill drops through their letter box.
However, things are set to change and energy is about to become a lot more “sexy”, according to Barker.
“The Green Deal framework that we’ve created and the money we’re putting into innovation is going to drive new products into the market, like the new NEST heating controls [next-generation smart thermostats] – which is sexy.
“There are a lot more consumer-friendly products coming down the line. Our ambitious rollout of smart meters is going to change people’s relationships.”
Barker’s vision of the future is one where energy is something people are involved with on a daily basis, and it is something where public engagement will be higher than it currently is.
Switching will be easy and commonplace, while there is also his vision of the “big 60,000”, where decentralised generation sees community-owned generation and domestic solar installations challenge the power of the big six suppliers’.
The push for switching is currently government policy – with the fact that consumers could save hundreds of pounds being made again and again.
Barker himself has recently followed this advice and switched his supplier – “It was a substantial improvement over my old deal,” he says with a smile.