ESTA VIEWPOINT
For further information on ESTA visit www.estaenergy.org.uk
The year to make energy efficiency a priority Despite the disruption to our lives and business world in 2020 ESTA has launched some important new initiatives. And more are planned for the coming year, writes Mervyn Pilley
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raditionally the last column of the year is a review of the year gone by. I think that we can all agree that 2020 has been one of the strangest, most challenging years in our lifetime. The growing clamour for a proactive, post-pandemic green recovery is clear but what is not so clear at the time of writing is how the UK Government is going to deliver this. One thing is clear is that the £9.2bn manifesto promise needs to be spent whether the cost of COVID has derailed some of the other spending plans. The furlough scheme has just been extended through the winter months so the potential unemployment figure is not known. However, based on already announced job losses it is clearly going to be multiple times higher than it has been in recent years. We owe it to the unemployed, their families and indeed the UK public to deal with the unemployed situation by diverting people into hundreds of thousands of new jobs supporting the green economy. The long-awaited energy white paper will hopefully spell out just how the Government intends to give us what we all need. Making energy efficiency a priority is the theme of our next conference and a new ESTA-backed campaign for 2021 and beyond. Energy efficiency needs to stop being the ‘junior partner’ in all of the activity and policies in the drive towards net zero targets. As important as CCS, EVs, trees and supply issues are surely using less energy has to be a very important focus for every person, business, organisation and Government. In advance of the white paper there is a great deal of lobbying and campaigning to be done. Reviewing the year there have been a lot of positives in among the many negatives. Collaboration has been very high on my agenda and we have been
‘Using less energy has to be a very important focus for every business’ very pleased to launch a new Energy Efficiency in Buildings group jointly with the Building Engineering Services Association – BESA. We believe that this is an important new initiative to engage with facilities managers and other engineers to maximise energy efficiency solutions for the UK commercial buildings stock. This group will be meeting regularly starting in the new year. We are also looking to work with the BESA Academy giving us a conduit for our new training products due to be launched early in 2021. The pivot to Zoom/Teams etc has radically ramped up our opportunities globally. Energy efficiency is needed worldwide and ESTA needs to be global in its outlook. COVID has slowed down many of the exciting initiatives that I have been working on. The remaining uncertainty (at the time of writing)
Mervyn Pilley is executive director of ESTA (Energy Services and Technology Association)
relating to our exit from the EU also means that helping our UK members to trade at scale internationally remains a priority. Helping ESTA members to get work will remain my absolute priority in 2021, hopefully in a better economic environment than we have now. Two other positives from 2020 have been the launch of our behaviour change programme – the Energy Conscious Organisation. There is a very long waiting list for consultant training and the launch of certification for businesses and organisations around the world. There are plenty of sponsorship opportunities available to support this highly innovative initiative and if any readers are interested please get in touch with me. Another initiative was the decision to join the Energy and Utilities Alliance. This will, I believe, help us to move energy efficiency forward far more quickly than if we were trying to do this on our own. It will certainly broaden our scope in terms of supply solutions. On the less positive side the removal of the Enhanced Capital Allowances scheme on the 1st April has done huge damage to the relevance of the Energy Technology list. In reality, the ETL will now effectively be a marketing list only. The BEIS response to the 2019 SME Energy efficiency consultation that took so very long to be issued was disappointing as the auction option that I believe is the least likely solution to work was chosen as the preferred route. Interestingly I do think that a commercial auction route not involving a Government website and offering solutions to end users may have ‘legs’ and I am exploring options. We are also continuing to work on the UK SME Energy Alliance and again can only hope for a far better environment to operate in than we have had with 18 months of Brexit, general election and COVID.
26 | ENERGY IN BUILDINGS & INDUSTRY | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
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