Leader:little changes can make a big difference

There’s something so tempting about radical, grand schemes. Let’s build nuclear! Let’s design a capacity market! Let’s develop a national water grid! They provide big solutions to big problems; build political and business reputations and careers; and provide headlines month after month and year after year as every twist and tortuous turn is documented.

Yet often, the real answers lie in the little changes – doing things slightly differently, with a little impact, building over time. It’s not as glamorous, it won’t make anybody’s name, and it might take even longer than a decision on Hinkley Point C – but it works.

This week, we report the Lib Dems have called for more widespread adoption of Suds, or sustainable drainage systems. Reforms to bring these forward were contained in the 2010 Water White Paper, and have the backing of water companies, experts and politicians led by the Efra select committee. Yet the government is still dragging its feet over reforms that would push Suds through the planning system.

Meanwhile, in the networks sector, we report this week that new data released to distribution network operators by the Customer-Led Network Revolution will help develop understanding of evolving customer use patterns; information that could enable networks to make more efficient use of their resources. This project was one of many funded by the Low Carbon Network Fund – a government-backed scheme, now closed, to foster innovation in a sector that had been starved of R&D by years of the RPI-X price regime.

We also report a warning from Basil Scarsella, chief executive of UK Power Networks, that Ofgem risks ending this nascent culture of innovation. He argues that the regulator is demanding too high a rate of return on its investment in innovation, setting the bar too high for networks to achieve their own business benefits.

On the energy supply side of the utilities business, Labour and the Lib Dems both seem to have realised the benefits of just getting something done. They have taken the fight to energy efficiency, which, despite Caroline Flint’s attempts to give it “national infrastructure” billing, is never going to be sexy. But it is important, and could make as much, if not more, difference to the country’s energy future as high-powered deals brokered in Whitehall and boardrooms.

If the government and regulator could take the same approach to Suds, innovation in networks and many other small but sensible reforms, some of those grands projets may start to look less necessary.