Lack of information
58. The lack of priority given to energy efficiency
at home and at work is partly a cause, and partly a result, of
difficulties in securing appropriate information on the available
measures and means of implementing them. Without information the
benefits will not be understood and nor will attention be devoted
to securing them. Without inducements to pursue potential benefits
the information will not be sought. This lack-of-information barrier
applies as much to the lack of information about actual energy
costs, due to billing arrangements (whether the virtual invisibility
of direct debit arrangements or the actual invisibility of a notional
service charge), as to possible means of reducing consumption.
59. The Government's current programmes are very
much focussed on the provision of information and the promotion
of awareness in all sectors. We regard the efforts of the best
practice programmes for industry and of the Trust for SMEs and
households to be worthwhile. However, advice and information need
to be first sought out, then provided, and finally acted upon.
Lack of resources
60. To invest to save energy capital is needed
up front. In addition, as described above, even where resources
are available priority needs to be assigned to energy efficiency
for the matter to be allocated funds. Clearly in the case of fuel
poverty, a lack of funds, or access to them, is likely to be a
problem by definition. The issue of split incentives seems also
to be a significant issue here. For example in the case of rented
accommodation or premises where the tenant may be reluctant to
sink funds into property improvement and the landlord may be equally
reluctant so in the light of fact that the benefits will accrue
to the tenant (and the low status of energy efficiency may make
such investment a low priority in terms of property improvement
to attract future tenants). Furthermore tenants may be reluctant
to pursue such improvements if rent increases might then ensue.
61. We regard the over-arching barrier to be as Mr
Andrew Warren of ACE described: that energy efficiency is "exceptionally
boring" smacking of frugality and doing without. Combined
with perceptions of low and falling prices the information available
from various sources is either not sought out or not acted on
as competing priorities win out. We believe that the "Are
you doing your bit?" campaign theme is unlikely to redress
this balance. This message seems redolent of wartime exhortations
on rationing or 'digging for victory' and runs counter to the
"gain not pain" message with which the Deputy Prime
Minister launched the Climate Change consultation and which expresses
the potential for economic, environmental and social benefits
arising from improvements in energy efficiency.
68 Op.cit., pp54n-
56. ETSU has not published figures for the potential for energy
savings in the energy supply industries and the Building Research
Energy Conservation Unit (BRESCU) are working on estimates for
the commercial sectors. Back
69 "Cost-
effective" and "technically possible" are defined
in the Marshall Report, pp54-5. Back
70 Ev
p 34 Back
71 Technically
possible, financially attractive and simply implemented. Back
72 Ev
p 22 Back
73 Energy
Policies of IEA Countries, The UK 1998 Review, International
Energy Agency/OECD, 1998 Back
74 QQ178
and 139 Back
75 Q617 Back
76 Energy
Efficiency in the EC - towards a strategy for the rational use
of energy, COM(1998)246 and Energy Efficiency Initiative, IEA,
1997. Back
77 Q214 Back
78 Consumers'
Association, Warm homes, low bills, cool planet, 1997. Back
79 Q679 Back
80 Q208 Back
81 Q527 Back
82 Q218 Back
83 Ev
p 307 Back
84 QQ116
and 454 Back
