For example, in the public sector 81% of council houses have no cavity wall insulation, and 57% of lofts have less than four units of insulation, while only 6 of the new out of town supermarket achieved the higher standards that the developers professed to want to attain.
There's thus slow progress on the ground, and the demise of the Energy Efficiency Bill and the problems facing the Energy Savings Trust (see Renew 89), indicate just how difficult it is to get the UK to mend its ways. The electricity regular, OFFER, has agreed to support a £25m pa four year EST conservation programme, but OFGAS the gas regulator still seems to be resisting further EST imposed surcharges on gas bills, with OFGAS director, Claire Spottiswoode coming under a lot of pressure to revise her policy - a policy which, by attempting to respond to the Government's aim of showing that privatisation lowers prices, is conflicting with the Government's policy on reducing carbon emissions.
The DTI is trying to square that particular circle, but for the moment, the problem is that the EST programme, which aims to save 2.5mT C pa by 2000, looks as if it will be starved of cash.
But the DTI need not try too hard - for the dash for gas seems likely to deliver quite large carbon emission reductions - down from 54.4mtc to 33.5mtc by 2000 according to a recent report on UK Energy and the Environment from Cambridge Econometrics. So conservation, and renewables, can be forgotten! However, it's all very short term. The UK may just make its 10mtc saving target by 2000, but after that there are as yet no further plans, and emissions, especially from cars will creep up. CHP
The Combined Heat and Power Association has launched a campaign calling for much more emphasis on CHP. It argues that energy from waste combustion plants only have a thermal efficiency of 22%, reducing carbon emissions by 29%, whereas CHP has an efficiency of 79% giving a 78% carbon saving. It wants CHP to be included in the NFFO - and this may well happen in the 1995/96 round. For more details see Renew 92
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