THE WARREN REPORT
03.21 Andrew Warren is chairman of the British Energy Efficiency Federation
Vague and vacuous – the Government’s latest proposal on fuel poverty Sustainable Warmth is the latest fuel poverty strategy. Launched without fanfare, it does little to inspire confidence that this scourge on our homes will be eliminated any time soon
E
nvironmental Justice. That is one key policy that US President Joe Biden has adopted. He has set up a large high-powered team in his administration the sole objective of which is to ensure that policies being adopted to deliver a zero-carbon society do not damage further the least advantaged and the poorest. This philosophy is echoed in the title of the UK Government’s long awaited new fuel poverty strategy. It is called “Sustainable Warmth.” You will be forgiven for not having heard about it before today. Last month it was quietly placed upon the Government website, just 48 hours after the energy minister Martin Callanan had assured the former buildings minister, Don Foster, in the House of Lords that “we plan to publish in due course…the updated fuel poverty strategy.” Not, please note, publish “imminently” or even “shortly”, the standard ministerial fob-offs to importunate questioners. I can find no evidence of any departmental press release, or even a staged Parliamentary answer announcing it. So, why the sudden release of a strategy intended to cover policy for the rest of the decade? After all, given the need to get the text signed off by all relevant government ministers and departments, it must largely have been written many weeks before. I suspect, when it was prepared, there were great hopes that England would be witnessing an enormous increase in the number of homes being made more energy efficient. Something Callanan stressed is “the best long-term solution to tackle fuel poverty.” This was because back in July the
Chancellor had announced £2bn to improve the energy efficiency of English homes, to be spent by the end of March. And the main programme, the Green Homes Grant scheme, was offering grants of £10,000 towards installing measures for low-income householders, twice the size of that more generally available. Consequently, “Sustainable Warmth” is littered with references to this scheme - I counted five separate occasions when this July statement from the Chancellor was cited in this relatively short document. But during last month there was a growing crescendo of highly publicised Parliamentary interventions, led by the powerful Environmental Audit Committee and its no-nonsense chair, Philip Dunne, pointing out what a tiny proportion of that £2bn had yet been spent. This was answered by confirmation that the Treasury intends, at the end of this month, taking back at least £1bn of the money announced for the scheme just eight months ago. The rest of “Sustainable Warmth” is both tendentious in many of its claims, and vacuous in many of its various proposals. The Government website leads with the bold claim that 1.2m fewer households are in fuel poverty than was the case in 2010. But in the document itself, unlike most other such statements, there is no cross-reference or source provided, which makes me suspicious. And certainly no absolute figures given between the number of English households in fuel poverty in 2010, and then in 2020. Even if such a statement could be justified, I suspect it must largely be due to the initial years of the decade. That was when the government was still funding the successful Warm Front programme exclusively aimed at improving low-income housing. Equivalent programmes have significantly continued, indeed grown in size, in each of the devolved nations. But since 2012, there has been a vacuum in England.
Statutory basis behind fuel poverty policy The Warm Homes & Energy Conservation Act 2000 is acknowledged to be the statutory basis behind fuel poverty policy. But there is no mention of its original target of abolishing fuel poverty by 2016 - indeed there is even a strange footnote referencing it as “requiring Government to set up interim milestones to reach the 2030 target, with dates for achieving them.” And nowhere is it stated that abolition is the objective, just
‘Sustainable Warmth is both tendentious in many of its claims and vacuous in many of its various proposals’
“driving down levels.” But how far? The answer is that weasel phrase “as far as is reasonably practical.” Ostensibly, to ensure everybody is in an energy performance certificate C rated home by 2030. Unless it is a listed building. Or unless they raise objections. Or unless it is all too difficult. There is a welcome recognition that the there is “real potential benefit in increasing homes to band C in one renovation”followed immediately by crowing that the fuel bill payer-funded Energy Company Obligation (ECO) has delivered 2.8m measures into 2.1m homes. In other words, just over a single measure per home. Precisely the opposite to that “real potential benefit.” To be fair, there are a few useful nuggets included for the future. There is formal confirmation that ECO’s budget will be restored for four years to £1bn a year- the rate it was back in 2013, but welcome, nonetheless. The Business Department has obviously at last got agreement with the Housing Ministry to provide better guidance for private landlords, particularly those of homes in multiple occupation, as to when they must provide an energy certificate: it is amazing how few comply. The Homes Upgrade Grant, that the Prime Minister announced last year won’t start until early (April?) 2022, but will be targeted at low-income, off-grid homes. The assumption is still that removing such homes from oil-heating to heat pumps will offer lower running costs in future. But maybe they know something about future prices per barrel of oil that we don’t. Whether installing heat pumps in the 80 per cent of homes currently enjoying gas-fired heating will lower many fuel bills remains to be seen. Biden’s Environmental Justice would surely require that to be a guarantee. MARCH 2021 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | 09
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