Smart Energy GB wasted money by going full pelt from day one, ex-director says

A former Smart Energy GB (SEGB) director has urged the government to learn from the failings of the smart meter rollout before establishing a similar campaign body for heat pumps.

Robert Cheesewright, who spent more than four years at SEGB, told Utility Week that the organisation wasted significant sums of money as it was “set up far too early”.

His warning comes after Utility Week revealed that a dedicated heat pump campaign body is being lined up by government.

Reflecting on SEGB’s formation, Cheesewright – who acted as policy and communications director – said the campaign body went too far, too early and as such spent money unnecessarily.

“At the time the rollout began you could’ve got 20-30% of people to get smart meters without the national campaign because the suppliers were doing outreach to the kind of people who were eligible,” Cheesewright, who joined SEGB four years after its formation, said.

“For instance, the early years of smart metering overindexed on the over 55s because they were likely to be home so you didn’t necessarily need the kind of marketing spend early on to deliver the results.”

He added: “You do need marketing in advance because you need to raise awareness before you need people to do the install but SEGB started right at the start of the rollout and were spending significant sums.

“The reason that’s not necessary for heat pumps is because the private sector is out already installing heat pumps and doing a pretty good job of communications around that… there’s a good case for a national programme to kick in but it probably doesn’t need to be right at the start.”

Despite the smart meter campaign running for more than a decade, the latest government figures show that at the end of September 2023, there were 33.9 million smart and advanced meters in Great Britain in homes and small businesses, accounting for just 59% of all meters.

SEGB is funded by energy suppliers and analysis of the organisation’s annual reports shows that its operating expenditure between 2013 and 2022 was more than £300 million.

Cheesewright also warned against attempting to target every single UK consumer, as SEGB has done, which he believed significantly added to its costs.

“The objective of SEGB was to get everyone a smart meter,” he said. “That massively increases your costs because […] trying to reach every single cohort in the country all the time […] requires you to spend an awful lot of money every year on hard to reach groups.

“But if you were a purely commercial enterprise, you wouldn’t do that. You would pick on the low hanging fruit in the first year, then the second, third and fourth years – you wouldn’t spend as much money on harder to reach audiences until nearer the end.”

He added: “The way SEGB was asked to go about its work by government and energy suppliers inherently made it the most expensive way you could do that task. In the end, no one was really happy with the consequences of that approach, but no single party had the ability to change the course.

Despite his reservations about a like-for-like campaign, Cheesewright suggested that there is potentially a role for a campaign on heat pumps, but not on the same scale of SEGB. He added that this could be done as a cheaper public relations campaign rather than mass marketing.

He added: “One of the real challenges of smart metering is that the campaign raised an awful lot of demand that energy suppliers couldn’t fulfil and you probably don’t want to repeat that for heat pumps because that causes the kinds of frustrations, disappointments and issues that happened with smart metering.

“So you could learn from that, you could sensibly have a public relations style campaign for the concept of and need for heat pumps […] you could do that early on but what you wouldn’t want is to spend tens of millions of pounds a year on marketing until the point at which you wanted to be installing them at really significant volume which obviously we’re not yet there in terms of where the sector is.”

A Smart Energy GB spokesperson said in response that the rollout is “one of the biggest behaviour change programmes in our country’s history”.

They added: “The most cost-effective way to deliver a national communications and engagement campaign of such scale and complexity is through a coordinated approach. Since our inception we have worked collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders including charities and voluntary organisations to reach people across Britain, including those in vulnerable circumstances, who may otherwise miss out on the opportunity to get a smart meter.

“Independent research shows that half of smart meter installations are due to Smart Energy GB’s activities. This demonstrates that our coordinated campaigning activity is having a huge, positive impact. There is of course still more work to be done.

“Smart Energy GB is held to account by its board which includes energy suppliers and consumer representatives. We conduct independent research regularly with the board and other senior stakeholders to measure their opinions of SEGB and its work. In 2022, SEGB’s favourability rating was 99%, up from 89% in 2021.”

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “The rollout is making good progress, with almost 34 million smart meters installed, allowing consumers to manage their energy use and save money, while also delivering on our commitments to net zero and energy security.

“While suppliers are primarily responsible for encouraging families to upgrade to smart meters, Smart Energy GB plays a key role in delivering the national campaign to consumers, helping them understand and access the benefits of smart meters.”