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Our modern society is built on readily available and inexpensive energy.
And this is reflected in our homes. If we look back just as little as 20
or 30 years, our homes nowadays have been transformed in terms of
energy-consuming equipment.
If I look into my study at night it can look as if there's a
Christmas tree in there. And, while the equipment is generally getting a
lot more efficient in the way it uses energy - for example, early colour
televisions used perhaps 10 times the power of today's sets - there are
so many more appliances in our homes that the amount of energy we are
using has risen inexorably. The consumption of equipment on standby like
the equipment in my study is equivalent to a power station or two at any
one time. That doesn't make sense and most people, as the study shows,
have no idea how much they are wasting.
Heating is still the main user of energy in households, but now we
expect a much higher standard of warmth and comfort than our
grandparents did - and that takes extra energy.
I would not for a moment suggest that we need to hearken back to some
idyllic pre-industrial Nirvana - I like comfort as much as anyone - but
we now know that we can't go on using energy as freely and often
wastefully as in the past because of the environmental consequences.
The Energy White Paper has put the environment firmly at the centre
of our energy policy, setting the broad agenda for everything to do with
energy over the next 50 years. There are other great challenges ahead,
including the sourcing of primary energy as our own reserves run down
and ensuring that the infrastructure can cope with the low-carbon,
decentralised energy production and supply environment which we foresee.
But it is clear that environmental concerns will be an important driver
of energy policy in the coming decades.
And it's pretty clear why - we are already seeing signs of
significant change in the earth's climate as a consequence of man-made
emissions from energy use. Global warming is not about the weather
getting nicer. It is about weather and climate becoming more extreme,
with the potential for massive disruption that may kill off species and
alter farming and agriculture patterns - and therefore society - beyond
recognition.
Already we read about coral starting to die off in the Pacific
because the sea is getting too warm, and fish species moving their
spawning grounds for the same reason. In this country over the last few
years we have experienced devastating and repeated floods in many areas.
Many parts of Europe have had the same experience: and yet this summer
the Danube became unnavigable because of catastrophically low water
levels. In the US last winter, the Eastern seaboard suffered crippling
snowstorms, and in the summer the same area suffered a higher-than-usual
number of hurricanes, while the central states of the US had over 400
tornado warnings.
All of these changes threaten our way of life: maybe not this year or
next, but eventually - either through direct physical impact on our own
neighbourhood, or in other ways because for example of forced migration
of people from places where they can no longer live.
So now we need to pay more than lip service to the idea of a
low-carbon future. That is why the White Paper brings the environment
explicitly to the heart of energy policy. We need a step change
improvement in the energy efficiency of the economy - and about a third
of our energy consumption is in our homes.
There have been messages from Government since the first oil crisis
of the early 1970s - when the Energy Conservation Division was created
in the then Department of Energy - that we need to use energy more
efficiently, with the initial emphasis on saving money and latterly on
saving the environment as well.
The various different messages over the years haven't achieved what's
needed. As Trevor has explained - and I often come across the work of
Trevor and colleagues of UEA in my work as Energy Minister. Nearly half
of households thought that what they did at home didn't make any
difference in terms of the world environment.
But it is only the agglomeration of those individual contributions
that will make a difference. Over half do recognise - we need the rest
to as well. It doesn't require too much effort to move people on to a
position where they will behave responsibly.
So, although the message from this research is that we still have a
very long way to go to find the right message to put energy efficiency
on the domestic agenda, it is also very important because we need input
to design better messages for the future.
We are doing practical things to take energy efficiency forward. We
have upgraded our Building Regulations, to improve the energy efficiency
of new buildings to a level as good as, or better than, is found
elsewhere in Europe. These higher standards will apply to refurbishment
as well as new build, and will be taken further in 2005 - for example,
all new domestic boilers will then need to be of the high-efficiency
condensing type.
Our future work to tackle fuel poverty will need to rest primarily on
improving insulation and heating in low-income households. Reductions in
the numbers in fuel poverty in recent years has come from income
improvements and lower energy prices, but we know that we cannot rely on
these trends being sustained indefinitely - indeed, energy prices are
likely to go up in the next few years. So improving the energy
efficiency of housing is a vital part of our work on social inclusion:
and I am grateful to Powergen for their work in this area, and
particularly the Heatstreets programme taking energy efficiency into the
community on an outreach basis.
Looking to the future, I am very keen to see energy suppliers
developing the idea of selling energy services to customers, rather than
simply billing them for numbers of units consumed. There is a lot of
potential for investment in the relationship between supplier and
customer. If you have a contract with me to meet all my energy needs
for, say, 3 years at a fixed price, you have much greater incentive to
make sure I'm not wasting any of the energy you supply, and to reduce my
consumption so as to improve your margin.
This is an idea that has worked well in the non-domestic sector, but
has struggled to get going for households. Following the White Paper a
Working Group was set up to look at this area, and good progress is
being made. I am grateful to Powergen for their input in this area too.
I look forward to new ideas for energy services coming forward from all
suppliers; and I hope that the competitive market will encourage
innovation in this area.
Continuing to look forward, I was particularly pleased to see
references in the booklet to improving technology as one answer to
environmental problems. The domestic-sized Combined Heat and Power plant
is an exciting concept which has great potential for energy saving: I
hope that we will over the next year or two see this idea move into
reality. Glad to see Powergen positioning for that.
But even this good idea relies on gas, and we need to look how to
help people who don't have gas, and are unlikely ever to get it. My
Department will be taking forward some pilot projects over the next few
months to assess the potential of renewable energy specifically in the
fuel poverty context; and here, too, I pay tribute to Powergen for work
they have done to look at the potential of ground source heat pumps as a
means of tackling fuel poverty in non-gas households.
So great challenges lie ahead. We need to get everyone to use energy
more wisely and, where possible, to use less. Improved technology will
be a great help to us in that, offsetting the rise in energy
consumption.
But key to our success will be changing attitudes: people need to
feel that it is good to use less energy, both financially and
environmentally. We need to understand better how to bring about this
change in attitudes, and I am grateful to Powergen for supporting this
research that has helped to illuminate the choices ahead.
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