In every debate about energy, the phrase
"keeping the lights on" keeps on cropping up. The UK's energy
secretary Ed Davey took just three sentences to reach it in his recent
statement on the government's energy bill, to be published later this week. The
measures "will bring on the investment required to keep the lights
on", he said.
Let's be clear: the lights aren't about to fail.
There was never any real danger of that for a wealthy country willing to pay
the right price in a global energy market.
In fact, what the new energy bill guarantees is that
the lights will keep burning as brightly as ever. As has become the norm in UK
energy policy, the bill virtually ignores efficiency measures. The UK is
neither being encouraged to turn the lights off, nor to insulate its homes so
it can turn the heating down, substantially cutting demand for electricity and
resulting in savings for consumers.
Hard to
swallow
To complicate matters, the business of tackling
climate change has become rather difficult for many to swallow in an age of
spiralling energy prices.
The reaction to Davey's "package of
decisions" to encourage investment in Britain's energy infrastructure was
a tale of two camps. It generally attracted positive reaction from experts,
even if most bemoaned the absence of a decarbonisation target for 2030, an
announcement of which has been postponed until after the next elections in
2015.
But the public reaction, led by the headline
writers, was less than enthusiastic. "Bills will rise to pay for green
power", said the Guardian newspaper. "Wind farms to increase energy
bills by £178 a year", said the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Mail went
further, with "Top Tory who earns thousands from green energy firms says
it is 'reasonable' for bills to rise by £2-a-week to pay for wind farms".
Stretched
consumers
Although the figures have been egregiously
miscalculated by some, increasingly stretched British consumers of every
political persuasion now know that they are expected to pay for green
technologies – and pay upfront.
What's more, according to the result of a survey
released in August, Britons' interest in climate change has declined markedly
over the past five years. What has not declined is awareness that money is
tight. So, mention climate change in the UK and people's eyes tend to glaze
over. But mention a rise in energy bills and the eyes narrow and eyebrows
furrow in anger. Mention that the rise is to pay for green measures, and you
have the roots of revolution.
Davey's department announced a "clear, durable
signal to investors", but headline writers saw something different amid
popular resentment at energy costs, and they went for the jugular.
Biggest
scandal
Let's be clear: there is plenty of scope for
worthwhile investment in the UK as far as efficiency and green energy goes. As
the Department of Energy and Climate Change's website puts it, "the UK has
been blessed with a wealth of energy resources", including the best wind,
tidal and wave resources in Europe. Back in 2010, Energy and Climate Change
Secretary Chris Huhne said that one of the biggest British scandals is that
despite the UK having superb renewable energy potential and the know-how to
exploit it, we are one of the worst-performing countries when it comes to
harnessing it.
Huhne promised the renewables industry "will
come of age under this government". It's worth pointing out that he is no
longer in post, but the figures in the energy bill seem to fulfil this promise,
at least partially.
Until this week, the Treasury had severely limited
the amount that energy companies could collect from consumers in order to make
investments in low-carbon infrastructure. That amount is about to rise
considerably, giving them a useful pot of money with which to work. "It's
in the right ballpark now," Ed Matthews of Transform UK, which aims to
raise investment in clean energy technologies, told New Scientist.
It is not yet clear how this extra money will be
split between renewable technologies, emissions cleaning and new nuclear power
stations. Jim Watson, director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of
Sussex in Brighton, UK, told New Scientist that his back of the envelope
calculations point to enough for investment in a big renewables plant, one
nuclear power station and a carbon capture and storage demo or two.
It's good news, then. But it hasn't played that way.
You can know the science, you can even fight your way through the murderous
economic arguments and come out with a workable plan. But British consumers,
who see only the bottom line, are going to struggle to get on board.
No motivation
Even if they wanted to do their bit for energy
efficiency, there is little to motivate them. Most people now have no financial
incentive to invest up front in making their homes more energy efficient, for
instance, despite potential long-term savings.
Why? In January 2013, the government will introduce
the Energy Company Obligation and the Green Deal. The ECO is aimed at
"hard to treat" homes, district heating schemes and measures for low income
and vulnerable households. That is laudable, but most people will be looking at
the Green Deal, which grants loans for improving the energy efficiency of the
home through measures such as cavity wall and loft insulation (a full quarter
of Britain's carbon emissions are from housing stock). However, Green Deal
loans will operate at commercial interest rates, and the negligible advance
take-up at a time of broad distaste for borrowing is already embarrassing the
government.
Experts agree that investing in power-generating
infrastructure is necessary, but say reducing energy consumption is also key to
"keeping the lights on". They also agree that the latter is not as
hard as you might think, despite official reluctance to implement energy efficiency
measures. US energy secretary Steven Chu once said this opportunity to curb
consumption is "not just low-hanging fruit; it is fruit that is lying on
the ground." It looks as if, in the UK at least, it may now stay there
long enough to rot under the glare of lights that are always on.
Michael Brooks is a science writer and New Scientist
consultant. His latest book is The Secret Anarchy of Science (Profile/Overlook)
No comments:
Post a Comment