In 2007/08 the Energy Saving Trust stimulated annual CO2 savings of 1.2 million tonnes and lifetime savings of over 24 million tonnes in the UK. Chief Executive of the Trust Philip Sellwood explains how...
“During my time at the Energy Saving Trust we have transformed ourselves from a small, rather inward-looking organisation to one that now engages with many millions of citizens as a result of both developing a national network of advice provisions and working really closely in partnership with public, private, community and voluntary organisations.
This year we helped nearly three million people save energy through our website and our network of 21 advice centres; we pride ourselves on not being London-centric, but regional and in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so not all our work is UK-focused marketing. This helps as people’s lives are so diverse - from the housing association flat to the Georgian terrace; we can’t adopt a one-size-fits-all approach.
We also have a network of more than 250 Green Ambassadors, who range from being in the early stages of doing something green in their homes through to having installed complex technology such as solar panels or heat pumps. These people keep us on the straight and narrow. They tell us what the real story is with regard to engaging them and what the barriers and the opportunities are. This isn’t classic market research; these are conversations.
It is because we offer expertise and advice locally, backed by the power of a nationwide Government campaign, that I believe we have a powerful chance of achieving our mission: 60 million citizens to be living low-carbon lifestyles by 2050. I realise, however, that citizens are not persuaded by advertising alone. We can’t change people’s energy habits or wasteful ways on our own and nor do people wake up and think ‘I must stop wasting energy today'.
We need to treat climate change like a product, reaching people at various ‘touch points’ in their lives. This may be at the supermarket when buying energy-using products, or when showcasing new technologies. It may be in the community; motivating people to get behind area-based schemes to change a community’s energy usage (we have some 4,500 communities already signed up to get specialised advice and we are aiming for 10,000 over the next three years).
We work in partnership with over 80 local authorities offering in-depth consultancy on reducing their carbon emissions in their locality and 96 percent of local authorities see the Trust as the expert authority on climate change. Our work with key committed partners like Proctor and Gamble, including the ‘Turn to 30 campaign’ is a good example of us ‘borrowing brands’ to reach consumers through different methods with energy-efficiency messages.
We are really delighted to be managing the £4 million Pay as You Save scheme for Government, announced by Secretary of State for the Environment Ed Miliband last week. We think this could be a fantastic breakthrough on how carbon emissions can be tackled. We will be trialling different financial packages and citizens could be accessing funds as early as winter this year.
We are currently setting up a range of partnerships that could add to this fund, including local authorities, installers and energy companies. The pilot is important as the information we gather will enable us to truly understand what type of financial package will help citizens install larger measures.
If I told you that you could save over £300 on your energy bill by turning things off standby and fitting insulation, you would listen. Money is a real issue at the moment and reinforcing an environmental message with an economic one clearly has mass appeal. We are all experiencing higher energy bills and therefore it makes social and economic sense to be energy efficient; for many of us it is a given and there is no choice.
We run our largest consumer campaigns in the autumn: Energy Saving Week runs 19-25th October. This year looks to be exciting and should stimulate a large amount of action and interest in the run up to Copenhagen. However, we can’t ignore the fact that we are only one piece of the puzzle, we have limited funds and resources and we need to work through communities and local advice centres to get businesses to also talk to their employees on energy saving at home. This behaviour can cross over into the workplace too and is an important tool in engaging people at all levels of their lives.
If we engage with people, we have to make actions simple and easy to understand. Sadly, this is not currently the case. Our own research at the Trust tells us that eight out of 10 people don't know what energy tariff they are on, while energy bills are seen as the most difficult to understand of all household bills.
If you start here, you can see the important role of technology in the home to help inform consumers. Based on savings of five percent, we estimate that if everyone in the UK had a smart meter installed, householders could save £1.2 billion a year and the equivalent of 7.4 million tonnes of CO2.
People need to see the energy they are saving in real time in order to engage them: we need to see smart meters with real time displays in every home. Smart meters have been trialled in countries ranging from Sweden to the US but are not widely available in the UK yet. These trials have shown that householders who use smart meters can reduce their energy bills by between five and 10 percent.
Consumers are confused and unsurprisingly get put off when things are too hard or difficult to do. Over 71 percent of people we interviewed this year say they want one source of advice on all green issues. It is very confusing when there are differing savings figures for the solutions you can undertake for your home; citizens don’t know who to trust. The current way of raising funds for energy-efficiency measures is via an obligation from Government on the energy companies.
The Carbon Efficiency Reduction Targets or CERT is the Government’s principal driver of household energy efficiency and carbon reduction. This scheme requires the energy suppliers to ensure they meet certain energy-efficiency targets, but allows them to choose how they meet these. Typically they will promote subsidised offers on loft and cavity wall insulation, as well as a wide range of high-efficiency lighting, heating systems, appliances and energy-saving devices.
Some 7.3 million homes still need cavity wall insulation and 12.9 million homes need lofts topped up. These measures would save 3.84 million tonnes of carbon a year. There are seven million uninsulated solid walls (if CERT money was channelled into solid wall insulation we would accrue 15 million tonnes a year carbon savings).
Solid wall insulation therefore has the greatest potential by far to save CO2 in the home.
After 2012 a more coordinated approach will need to be adopted. We do not support a solely supplier-led delivery model, although there are lessons to be taken forward on the strengths of previous schemes. We believe more centralised coordination of delivery is needed to include the installation of measures by third parties, eg. energy suppliers, local authorities, communities and others. We would work in partnership with local authorities to deliver area based measures.
We need to see total transparency, certainty and measurable targets. We need to eliminate the stop-start nature schemes, which become oversubscribed, for example, and make sure that there is consistency across offerings. It is essential that schemes on offer are easy for citizens to understand and access. There needs to be a single, independent body overseeing this process. New Energy Saving Trust research shows that more than half of consumers believe that energy suppliers and retailers are only partly trustworthy because they have mixed motives when providing advice on how to reduce energy in the home.
There needs to be one national port of call for the citizen in the first instance, even if there is more than one channel of delivery (eg. energy companies or local authorities). The citizen needs to know that there is one national independent organisation to turn to and advice at a local level is tailored but consistent with a national strategy.
If we throw everything at our existing housing stock and achieve an average decarbonisation of the grid, we could reduce UK domestic carbon emissions by 50 percent – and that’s based on today’s technologies. On this assumption the domestic sector has a huge role to play in helping us hit that 80 percent target by 2050 - we need to encourage citizens to act at key trigger points in the lifecycle of homes; natural opportunities for citizens to undertake energy-efficiency measures, such as installing additional insulation or a solar panel. Key trigger points might be boiler replacement, re-roofing, window replacement, new heating systems, acting on energy performance certificates when moving home, building an extension, changing an energy supplier or converting houses into flats.
Our research shows that 75 percent of citizens believe that if they are already making improvements to their home, the best time to make energy-efficiency improvements would be when the builders are already there. Citizens do see the merit in domestic renewable technologies but only when it is a financially viable option. That’s why we need to develop accessible green finance – low or zero interest loans where the capital costs of installing the technology is paid up front and paid back via the grid over time through energy generation. We need to make sure that householders have the right advice on how to use this technology – it’s no good having a solar panel if you constantly leave the hot tap running!
Research shows that householders are more likely to make larger investments, including micro generation and solid wall insulation, if the costs can be spread through the savings they make on their energy bills. We look forward to working with Government on the first 350 Green Finance projects and assessing the results to see how best to roll this out nationally.
We are setting up an Advisory Group comprised of a range of partners from local authorities, installers and energy companies that will help develop the potential finance packages available for consumers. If these pilots are successful this could be a great breakthrough in reducing carbon emissions with citizens being able to access funds from the pilots from winter this year.
If we address our existing housing stock and dramatically reduce the amount of energy we use we can make substantial changes. The UK is third from bottom in a league table of renewable energy across Europe, with only Luxembourg and Malta sourcing less of their energy from clean sources such as wind or sun.
The UK received one percent of its energy from renewables in 1995 and just 1.3 percent a decade later. Only Luxembourg, at 0.8 percent and 0.9 percent, and Malta, which has no renewable energy, come lower on the list. We are an island; surely we must do better at renewable technology? The Trust wants to see feed-in tariffs, smart meters and more investment in renewable technologies implemented as quickly as possible.
We also welcome the £10 million Community Renewables Challenge and the Community Renewables Advice online tool for communities.
The plans to introduce clean energy cash-back schemes are also good, and if properly designed will remove some of the cost barriers to people generating their own low-carbon energy. However, cash-back schemes alone will not be enough; people still need detailed technical advice and confidence in tried and trusted technologies before they invest in larger measures. The Energy Saving Trust will continue to provide this.
However, we are very disappointed that Government has chosen not to progress its plans to require homeowners to carry out basic energy-efficiency measures at the natural trigger points, when they’re doing major work on refurbishing or extending their home. Measures such as cavity wall insulation can save the homeowner money in a very short time and you might as well get it done while the builder’s already there. This is a reasonable, logical extension of regulation – and the public tell us this makes sense for them too.
The UK Government has committed itself to reducing the UK’s carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. You cannot possibly deliver on this if there is no credible, consistent delivery system. It’s important to remember that there will be more economic downturns in the years ahead, but you cannot afford to take time off when it comes to climate change. Energy efficiency and low-carbon energy can help play a role in easing the burden for those most in need in future economic downturns. We must provide their energy needs at an affordable price.
Frankly I hope the Energy Saving Trust isn’t in existence in 20 years because if it is then we have failed; but right now there is a lot more to do if we are to come close to hitting that 80 percent target. There are grants available for cavity wall and loft insulation, for example, but there are seven million solid walls still left uninsulated.
We need the right delivery mechanism to meet this essential challenge because solid wall insulation will save us by far and away the most carbon of any measure. As well as providing people with help towards solid wall insulation we need to encourage far more people to invest in micro-generation technology like solar panels, for example.
Forty percent of people would invest in this technology if they could sell additional energy produced back to the grid for a fair price. We need to make sure this becomes a reality so that people embrace new technologies. And let’s not forget that householders need help and advice to help them undertake these investments. A quarter of people think that once they have insulated their loft they have done everything they can to reduce their carbon emissions. It is essential that there is a single source for people to come to for independent and trusted advice in order to encourage them to take action. This isn’t a political issue – it's necessity."
So as head of an organisation charged with persuading us all to look at our homes and lifestyles in a greener light, how far does Philip Sellwood go himself? ClickGreen put him on the spot, asking whether his own home boasts an energy performance certificate, loft insulation, energy-efficient lightbulbs, cavity wall insulation or renewable power sources...
"The fact is needing to do ‘all or nothing’ doesn’t work for me personally. This isn’t about reinventing the wheel; it’s about making the changes you can, when you can. Not all of us to cycle to work. We can, however, make our meals work harder for us through not throwing food waste away - in fact, recent research shows that 82 percent of us already use leftovers to make the following day’s meal. I have energy-saving lightbulbs throughout and take the train most of the time; but I use a car. However, I make sure I drive it in a smarter way (driving in low gears, etc) and we have enough food in the house so we don’t go back and forward to the shops more than we have to.
The appliances around my home are all A-rated and I have just installed an A-rated condensing boiler. Let’s not forget that domestic carbon emissions in the home and domestic transport is half of the problem and therefore half of the solution. We have to hit these emissions targets in order to limit the affect of climate change.
I am a retailer by background and when I joined the Trust this was all new to me. I believed that was a good thing and have become more passionate as time has gone on. I still remain like the majority of the public. I need to know why it should be important for me to be more energy efficient and what part the Government and retailers need to play.
With 60 million people to reach we can’t rely on talking to ‘deep greens’ alone. It’s the cab driver, the retired school teacher, the MP, the publican: it’s everybody. I try to reach people in the traditional marketing way. What’s the benefit and why should I change? Create the want and be clear about the need. The benefit to me is clear – you can save at least £300 a year by being energy efficient.
That’s regardless of the fact that environmentally we just can’t carry on as we are. The science of the effects of climate change is clear, but we can change in the coming years by lessening our impact on climate change. We all have our part to play.”
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