Draft Energy Bill Doesn’t Measure Up
The draft Energy Bill and the government’s energy efficiency policy is not fit for purpose: that’s the consensus of representatives from the University of Exeter, energy supplier SSE, Consumer Focus, the World Wildlife Federation, and 12 other organisations.
Those involved met at a series of roundtables and concluded that:
“The Government’s draft Energy Bill and existing energy efficiency policies would in their current state, fail to deliver a secure, clean and affordable power sector for the UK and would result in the UK missing out on some key economic growth opportunities.”
The main points of contention were that that the proposed policy fell short in terms of:
- Energy savings – cutting energy demand ‘must be the centrepiece of energy policy’.
- Impact on customers – the cost of infrastructure improvements mustn’t weigh too heavily on consumers.
- Renewable investment – certainty around investment in the renewable energy sector, for example, the CfD and Feed-in Tariff should be extended to all renewable technologies.
- Incentivisation – incentivisation is needed to ensure a genuine spread of renewable energy options, to maintain system security, and to ensure that there exists an appropriate emission limit safeguard to prevent the breaching of carbon budgets.
A quite damning deconstruction of the draft bill coming from a series of high profile contributors and think tanks.
The full list of people/organisations involved:
- SSE
- University of Exeter
- Energy Policy Group
- Consumer Focus
- WWF-UK
- E3G
- Energy Saving Trust
- Friends of the Earth
- National Energy Action
- Siemens
- Vestas
- Gamesa
- RES
- Climate Change Capital
- Good Energy
- IPPR
- Anthony Froggat
- Dr Robert Gross
- Western Power
- Greenpeace
- Green Alliance
- RSPB
(Source: wwf.org.uk)
The question now is how will the government respond before the Energy Bill moves from Draft to implementation.