Extracts from the March-April 2003 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

9. Energy Saving Targets Shortfall?

The Energy Efficiency Commitment (EEC), introduced last April, which replaces the Energy Efficiency Standards of Performance (EESoP) scheme, requires energy suppliers to save 62TWh over the next three years by installing better insulation, more efficient central heating and increasing the sale of low-energy lighting, with at least 50% of the measures to be targeted at the fuel poor. Savings of 5TWh were expected in the first three months of the scheme, but the National Energy Action’s annual conference last October was told by Ofgem’s Charles Hargreaves that companies managed only about 2TWh. The new scheme is expected to require suppliers to spend three times as much as they did on the earlier scheme.

Hargreaves told Utility Week the new scheme was a ‘step change’ from the EESoP arrangements and that suppliers were struggling to ‘get up to speed’. But he insisted there were no signs that companies would not make the final target.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) meanwhile has called for ambitious new targets for energy conservation, including a major increase in the EEC target so that by the end of the decade it reaches a target 2.5 times greater than at present. Eoin Lees, EST’s chief executive said ‘Our analysis shows that energy efficiency is not only the most cost-effective way of securing future energy supply, by cutting energy use, but energy efficiency cuts carbon emissions with a net benefit to the economy of £150 per tonne.’

He added: ‘The UK has never put its weight behind energy efficiency, especially in the household sector. Existing programmes are cost effective, but too small. It is time we caught up with our European neighbours.’ Source: Utility Week

Around £150m is available in energy conservation support grants but it seems that up take is still low. The Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (HEES), now renamed ‘Warm Front’, pays up to £2,500 towards energy-saving measures for households in England with someone aged 60 or over, or for those on low incomes or people receiving benefits. In Wales, where the scheme is still known as HEES, the top payment is £2,700. In Scotland, it is called Warm Deal and the maximum is £500, though pensioners may qualify for help with central heating.

Conservation versus Nuclear

In parliamentary questions session last Oct, Brian Wilson gave little away when Julia Drown (S. Swindon) pointed out that the Energy Saving Trust had calculated that energy efficiency in households could produce six times the amount of energy that nuclear power stations provide to households.

Mr. Wilson: ‘I do not think that we need additional nuclear power, but whether taking action in respect of our one significant low carbon contributor at precisely this point is the cleverest thing to do when our objective is to create a much lower carbon energy mix is a question for the White Paper’.

Pressed on the issue, he added ‘The difference between six times greater energy efficiency and a 25 per cent. contribution to our electricity mix from nuclear power is this: one remains hypothetical and desirable, while the other actually exists’.

Alan Simpson (Nottingham S) then noted that the £650m loaned to British Energy was ‘five times the amount that the Government said they could not afford to spend on supporting the Warm Homes Bill, which fell last year’.

Mr. Wilson: ‘Let me gently point out that there would have been an awful lot of very cold homes if we had not supported British Energy during the crisis. We obtain 25 per cent. of our electricity from nuclear power, and the one thing that we cannot responsibly do is turn the key and walk away. We gave a loan to British Energy for two reasons: to ensure security of supply, which is a responsibility of any

Government, and to ensure the safe operation of our nuclear power stations.’