How green is the UK government?

In December 2015, David Bleicher, Publications and Training Manager at --BSRIA asked whether the storm clouds were gathering for carbon reduction incentives.

2008 was a year of optimism for energy efficiency incentives in the UK. It was the year the Climate Change Act made it a legal requirement for greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced to a fifth of what they were in 1990 by 2050. It was in 2008 that the rules on Energy Performance Certificates, Display Energy Certificates and Air Conditioning Inspections fully came into force. This was also the year that an ambitious plan was launched to require new homes to be zero carbon by 2016.

Within a few days of becoming Prime Minister in 2010, David Cameron pledged that his coalition would be the 'greenest government ever'. One of the flagship policies of the coalition was the Green Deal. The concept was that loans for energy efficiency improvements would be paid off through energy bills. Take up was slow, so slow in fact that the scheme was scrapped in July 2015. The Green Deal was overly complex, few people understood it, and those that did weren’t comfortable with taking out loans that would be passed on to future owners of their properties? Could it be the Green Deal was designed from the outset to fail?

Feed-in Tariffs were introduced before the 2010 election, and these initially created a big boost for solar electricity, but then in 2011 the tariffs for solar photovoltaics were cut in half. In July 2015 Amber Rudd, the secretary of state for energy and climate change, announced a review that could result in Feed-in Tariffs being abolished altogether.

Another energy efficiency incentive that may get ditched is Display Energy Certificates (DECs). These display a comparison of the building’s actual energy consumption against a benchmark, and are currently required in public buildings such as libraries and hospitals. A consultation ran in 2015 and, although the results haven’t been published yet, there’s a danger that DECs will be abolished and replaced with the minimum allowable under European legislation. This would be Energy Performance Certificates (providing a theoretical energy rating rather than actual energy use), renewed only every 10 years.

Buried in a July 2015 policy paper (Fixing the foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation) were a few words about scrapping the zero carbon homes policy. This wasn’t a surprise. When Part L of the Building Regulations was updated in 2013, the reduction in CO2 targets for new homes was a mere 6%. And, despite work done by the Zero Carbon Hub and other organisations, the Government never actually explained what was meant by the term 'zero carbon'.

But it’s not all bad. Some measures introduced in the past few years are still in place:

• Enhanced Capital Allowances are basically a tax break that can make it more cost-effective for some organisations to purchase certain energy efficient equipment.
• The CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme is an emissions cap and trade scheme for larger energy users, mirroring the European Emission Trading Scheme which applies to the largest factories and power stations.
• The Renewables Obligation requires electricity suppliers to source increasing proportions of their power from renewable sources.

There’s also a new one on the horizon: Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) formerly known as Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS). Legislation introduced in March 2015 means that, from 2018, private landlords won’t be able to rent out properties that have an EPC rating below E, unless energy efficiency improvements are made. Also, from 2016, tenants will be able to demand that their landlords make energy efficiency improvements.

World leaders are starting to take notice of climate change. In June 2015, G7 nations pledged to phase out fossil fuels by the end of the century. Angela Merkel and Barack Obama have both taken climate-reducing steps. After decades of failed talks, the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, presented a chance for a binding, universal agreement.

The world needs to tackle climate change, and everyone in the UK building industry has a part to play including building owners, designers, installers, energy assessors, and manufacturers of low-carbon technologies. In order to make this happen, they need some level of surety that policies and incentives will stay in place in the long term.

The justification for the cuts is seemingly to protect consumers and that renewables should be strong enough now to survive without subsidies. While DECC’s figures do suggest that money will be saved, such as the £40m-£100m from cutting solar subsidies, is this worth the sort of future we could be committing ourselves to? In the long-term do the cuts truly protect consumers?

Former secretary of state for energy and climate change, Ed Davey’s argument that ‘changes are based on ideology, not on evidence’ could ring true. If the Government continues to scrap schemes designed to meet the EU 2020 targets as well as the agreement to cut emissions by 80% by 2050 they run the risk of losing momentum and instead adding to Europe’s already inefficient building stock. The money saved will in all likelihood be spent correcting the problem as it worsens in the future potentially leading to consumers being in a worse situation than currently exists.

This article was originally published in BSRIA News in December 2015. See the original article at: Incentives for carbon reduction: are the storm clouds gathering?

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[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki

• Air Conditioning Inspection.
• Climate Change Act.
• COP21 Paris 2015.
• CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme.
• Display Energy Certificates.
• Energy Performance Certificates.
• Feed in tariff.
• Fixing the foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation
• Green deal.
• Greenhouse gases.
• Zero carbon homes.