Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380-399)
MR IAN
CHESHIRE, MS
RACHEL BRADLEY,
MR DAVE
SOWDEN AND
DR KEITH
MACLEAN
29 NOVEMBER 2006
Q380 David Lepper: So you carry out
the survey?
Mr Cheshire: Yes, and 20% of the
orders we have refunded we have cancelled the order because the
survey has revealed that actually, it is not an appropriate location.
Step one is to make sure it is in the right place. Step two is
to say that, where there is a wind supply, the calculation is
broadly speaking, best expressed as over the course of the year
we think it will generate 1000 kW, the average UK household electricity
domestic is about 3000, hence the up to 30%. The reality is that
this is early days in the sense that this is the first mass-market
adoption of this product. What we have undertaken to do is we
have started a trial with 100 of our customers who were going
to put wind turbines in anyway, and we are going to monitor them
over the next year and try and assess their efficiency in real-time
use and to get a sense of what is possible. The one thing I would
say is that one of the other things we would like to get across
is that some of those economics for people would be considerably
changed if some of the reverse selling arrangements on electricity
could be changed. We do believe that some of the economics in
the early days are going to be more challenging and, frankly,
in five years' time, I am sure the technology will be that much
better, but the early adopters want to start with it now. We think
the product is absolutely appropriate, and appropriate for a domestic
situation, but we would not put it into a place where there is
not appropriate wind.
Dr MacLean: It is an important
issue and any industry introducing a new product like this, particularly
something which is as high profile as this has become, has a difficult
balancing act to do between creating the interest that is needed
to pull it through and creating too much interest at an early
stage. The important point to think about with the wind turbines,
as well as the potential for reducing carbon and reducing people's
bills, which is clear; it is only how much that will be possible
in each location. I think the important point, particularly with
respect to the context of your inquiry, is how it engages people.
This is not the first microgeneration technology to be out there,
there are some others that have been around for a long time, heat
pumps and solar thermal solutions have been on the go for a long
time but for some reason they do not engage the public in the
same way that the windmills have. There is an added benefit of
the micro-wind solution in that it is really re-engaging people
with the idea of their power production, where it comes from,
how much it is and what contribution it is going to make and stimulates
the debate about all of these other issues which are very important.
Even if it is doing only that, it is a very important factor at
the moment.
Mr Sowden: We accept as an industry,
and Windsave is one of our member companies and I do not think
I am speaking out of turn in saying that they support this position,
that these products should not be oversold and it is important
that when selling products like that the hierarchy of energy efficiency
first followed by microgeneration is explained clearly to the
customer. I do not want to gainsay what Ian might say on this,
but some customers, and in fact there is one Member of Parliament
that I am aware of who was advised by Windsave that the location
of his house was inappropriate because there was not enough wind
and he said "I want one anyway". If you give the customer
that advice and the customer chooses to go ahead then there is
nothing wrong with that, but I think it is very important, particularly
in the early stages of development of the microgeneration industry,
that we are clear with customers, we are honest with customers
that they need to pick the low hanging fruit of cavity wall insulation,
loft insulation and energy saving light bulbs before they start
considering microgeneration. Microgeneration has enough interest,
it has a big enough market, there is no need for mis-selling and
it will not do the industry any good five years down the line
if we are on BBC Watchdog programme accused of mis-selling.
It is important that we acknowledge as an industry, which we do,
that microgeneration has a role to play, it is not the answer
to everything, it has a role to play, it has a big market, but
it needs to know its rightful place amongst other policy measures.
Q381 David Lepper: B&Q, have
you got in first with marketing of this scale or are there others
already doing it?
Mr Cheshire: We believe we are
certainly the first mass market retailer to put together the whole
energy efficiency programme in its broader sense and put that
on national TV. We also believe we are the first to mass market
the specific wind turbine. It has been on sale successfully for
many years already so it is not in that sense a new product, but
B&Q's role in all of this is this whole process of democratisation,
so move it from niche to mass market, give it some exposure and
the challenge is exactly what Dave says, to sell it clearly and
responsibly and not make false claims for it and we work fairly
hard to do that and will continue to do that with all the other
products that we sell. It is a major exercise just to get some
of these calculations and claims organised.
Q382 David Lepper: In your evidence
you did talk about the difficulties of getting planning permission
and we have already touched on that a bit this afternoon, not
just the costs but the difficulty of getting the permission. I
gather that something like 35% of the wind turbines that you have
sold have been returned to you because of difficulties with planning
permission.
Mr Cheshire: The way it worked
was we have had about a third of the initial orders fall through,
of those 35% were for planning and 20% were for survey reasons.
We are going back to point on the wind front. We are still exploring
this and frankly we might be a little bit early in terms of calling
it because, for example, we found on the solar heating panels
we have sold, that went off more slowly but we have had a higher
hit rate in terms of going through, in terms of insulation. Going
back to what I said before, we would be very keen once we have
done our overall programme review in December to come back with
a generic picture. Certainly when I have been in store and talking
to our customers, we have had certain individual customers who
have had major planning battles with local councils trying to
get the principle established. What comes across is the need for
consistency, it is clarity in explaining to customers what is
possible. Obviously there are certain local issues and it has
got to be sensitively handled, but there is not any form of joined-up
thinking and in many cases we have got customers saying, "I
phoned up the council and asked them what their policy was and
they said `We have not got one'." This is the start of something.
Mr Sowden: May I comment on this
as well because the problem is very real, particularly given the
mass market launch of our colleagues here, but there are changes
on the way and it is important to acknowledge that. The Climate
Change and Sustainable Energy Act placed a statutory duty on the
Government to review the permitted development system for microgeneration.
We are expecting the Government to publish its recommendations
on the outcome of that. The DCLG is working to a timetable and
we do expect wind turbines of less than a certain diameter and
lower than a certain height to be let into what is called the
General Permitted Development Order statutory instrument, which
would avoid the need for planning permission. That is happening
in England. Scotland is running slightly slower than England,
there are two private Members' bills which will come forward after
the Scottish Parliament elections in May and the Scottish Executive
has now consulted on this and, in fact, we are seeing exactly
the same initiative from a backbencher in the Welsh Assembly as
well. Although I accept that B&Q and Windsave have a very
live issue now because they are out there trying to sell units
in volume, this is something that should sort itself out within
the next 12 months or so because of Government action and that
will level the playing field and remove this geographic inconsistency.
In the meantime, it is no good for us to have the majority of
sales caught up at the moment and installation not proceeding
because of planning constraints.
Q383 David Taylor: We are all anxious
to know who the persistent MP is and whether or not he lives in
Notting Hill! If he did live in Notting Hill, it is, of course,
a very windy place. You had a reception here on 25 October and
I congratulate you on that, I think it was very, very helpful
to MPs who attended. You wrote to me and to all others saying
in part, "We are also looking to the Government to make the
planning permission process for wind turbines as simple and as
cheap as possible, in order to encourage take-up of domestically
generated energy" and I understand that. In the very same
post from a very attractive village in my constituency, a constituent
who was having difficulty with planning permission wrote, "We
note... that B&Q have started marketing the same product that
we are hoping to install in our property. This move together with
the Government's initiative through the Climate Change Bill...
is giving mixed messages to the public", which is what you
are saying Mr Cheshire. Do you think there is anything that retailers
such as yourself can do or the manufacturers or, indeed, the Local
Government Association or the Town and Country Planning Association
to actually spell out what will be acceptable within permitted
development? This is a very scenic village and I can understand
anything that is very prominent might pose problems for the planners.
Mr Cheshire: At the moment my
sense would be that this is, if you like, work in progress because
we were informed that this was en route and in some sense it was
unfortunate timing because at one point some time ago we thought
it would be coming sooner and then it did not, so you still have
this slight concern about when will it arrive and what shape will
it arrive in and will it be sufficiently organised. I take the
directional comfort that Dave refers to but I am still not there
yet. I think even when we get the permitted development piece
there are going to be issues such as "I live in a conservation
area, I am trying to put a turbine up, I have got some particular
issues, `probably similar to your constituent', and I think it
would be beneficial to do a bit of work together in terms of `Here
are the broad dos and don'ts that people have worked out'. Frankly,
I went back into some of the archives and saw some of the debates
over satellite dishes and there were an awful lot of the same
sorts of issues being debated and that ended up with a rough practice
and I think we will probably need to develop that. I certainly
would be very happy to be involved in that as a process.
Q384 Lynne Jones: Notwithstanding
people's reluctance to spend a couple of quid extra on an energy
saving light bulb that will pay for itself several times over
within 12 months—there seem to be people with more money
than sense who are prepared to spend £1,500 on a wind turbine
that will not pay for itself—is not the important issue
perhaps for those people the amount of CO2 that will be saved
in the lifetime of such a turbine compared with perhaps the amount
of CO2 emissions in the manufacture of that turbine and should
we not have that information? Is that information available?
Mr Cheshire: That is a very good
question. Firstly, we are looking and this is not just an issue
around the wind turbine, I think we are trying to understand now
far more clearly the degree of, if you like, footprint the product
has created and that is a live issue which, going back to what
Rachel was saying earlier, we are trying increasingly to understand
not just in the wind turbine but in other products, and that could
be boilers, it could be other areas, how much has gone in and
how much is saved, so you have got more of a lifetime value of
product. Frankly, the information is not there in any great shape
or form yet. As we work and develop it, yes, I think that is something
that we should put in people's minds because I think increasingly
people will take a more integrated view and we have seen it already
with debates around electric hybrid cars, about lifetime value
disposal issues and increasingly that will have to be a broader
debate. Unfortunately, I think we are not quite in position yet.
Q385 Lynne Jones: I have a property
with no electricity. Our only electricity is from a wind turbine
and photovoltaics and we run the house, but we would not have
one on our house in Birmingham because it is just not worthwhile
and we need to look at those issues.
Mr Cheshire: I absolutely firmly
believe that we will see a mixture of solutions and a mixture
of both microgeneration and energy efficiency and there will not
be a "one size fits all". I think the important thing
is to have a breadth of options for customers and say, "In
this situation this is an appropriate act or intervention",
and, "In this situation it is completely different".
Q386 David Lepper: You touched on
microtechnology and boilers just now as well. Perhaps Dr MacLean
and Mr Sowden might want to deal with this more but B&Q might
as well. There seems to be a delay in bringing forward substantial
proposals for micro-CHP technology and boilers to replace the
current domestic central heating boilers. What are the reasons
for that?
Mr Sowden: I think the primary
reason is that the companies bringing those products to market
want to get them right. They have taken a very close look at what
happened to condensing boilers and the way they were introduced
in this country over 20 years ago and the industry got that badly
wrong. There is a lot of investment being poured into the development
of that particular technology, not just the ones that look and
operate very similarly to conventional boilers, ie the sterling
engine technologies, as it is called, but also fuel cells too.
The developers of those technologies are absolutely clear that
they cannot afford to "do a condensing boiler" and several
of our companies are investing in these technologies and quite
unapologetic about how long it is taking for them to come to market
because they are determined to get it right first time.
Mr Cheshire: Just to add to that,
I would be incredibly keen to bring forward the first mass market
micro-CHP and I have been hassling my colleagues here asking,
"When can I have one, please?" so it is a question of
the supply coming through.
Mr Sowden: I think on a slightly
larger scale, including the domestic scale in countries like Germany,
there are, in fact, commercially available micro-CHP products.
A subsidiary of one of our member companies sells units in Germany.
In fact, they now have several thousand installations in this
country, but it is not appropriate for smaller houses; it is appropriate
for big houses. In Germany there tends to be many more houses
of multiple occupancy and I believe their sales are up to 20,000
units over there now.
Q387 David Lepper: The right technology
for the UK context rather than the technology in itself?
Mr Sowden: Yes, that is right.
A personal view is that I think they will get there, but they
need to get it right first time. It brings us on to another point
that I did want to put forward which is we do not have collegiate
industry standards across the microgeneration sector at the moment
and we believe that is tremendously important because we do not
want to get into the world that the double-glazing industry got
itself into in the early years. We are keen that the micropower
industry gets off to a good start, that we have decent products
properly certified, installed by properly-trained and accredited
installers and underwritten by sales codes so we get the industry
off to a good start. We can perhaps look at underwriting some
of those installations with industry-wide guarantees similar to
the ones that the cavity wall insulation industry developed a
few years ago. We think that taking our responsibility as an industry
seriously, developing those sorts of initiatives, perhaps in response
to some of the policy moves that the Government has made in recent
years, are ways in which we can play our part to get the industry
off to a good start and avoid the accusations of cowboys being
involved.
Q388 Patrick Hall: One quick follow-up
on the point that Lynne Jones asked about the lifetime carbon
footprint of the wind turbine. Mr Cheshire, I think you said that
you were looking into this. You are a big retailer, surely, if
you ask the manufacturers I am sure they would be delighted to
tell you because they want to sell you lots of wind turbines?
Mr Cheshire: It is a question
we have asked which I am looking forward getting the answer to
but we did not have at the start of this. There are some assumptions
about lifetime as well which are a little bit sensitive to assumptions
at the moment. I think this is going to come up with an answer
shortly, but it is not one we have in the back pocket yet. As
soon as we get it, I am more than happy to provide the information
and we will do that.
Q389 Lynne Jones: If I have got a
functioning, inefficient boiler that is going, what should I do?
Should I replace it with a condensing boiler now or wait until
I can get a CHP?
Mr Sowden: Are you on the gas
network?
Q390 Lynne Jones: Yes, it is a gas
boiler, 25 years old. I am ashamed of its inefficiency and I have
been waiting to get CHP, so should I get a condensing boiler now
or wait?
Mr Sowden: I will dodge that question
and tell you what I am doing with mine, which is I am installing
a condensing boiler supplemented by solar hot water.
Mr Cheshire: That is exactly what
I would have said.
Chairman: Well, that is very kind of
you! All round to Lynne's place to install it!
Lynne Jones: It was the conclusion I
had come to too.
Chairman: With that happy coincidence,
we will move on to David Drew.
Q391 Mr Drew: We have dodged around
this a few times, but let us now just hit it head-on which is
the Government's Microgeneration Strategy. You have mentioned
this in your submission. Where is it in the expectation of its
delivery time and, most particularly, I think what would interest
us—and we keep coming up against this—is where is
the leadership, which department and can you help elucidate what
you think should be happening? Maybe we could then make some recommendations
to Government.
Mr Sowden: I will start off and
then hand over to Keith to comment. Broadly, the package of policy
measures in the Microgeneration Strategy is something which the
industry welcomed at the time of publication and we still think
that, broadly, it is the right suite of policies. There are two
important gaps in our view. One is policies to promote renewable
heat and the Government has now committed in the Energy Review
to setting out proposals on renewable heat by April next year.
We have already fed in our ideas on how we think that should work
in the micropower sector and catalysed the debate amongst the
wider parties in the sustainable energy industry and got quite
a significant buy-in to that. On fiscal policy, in fact the only
significant clause in the original Climate Change and Sustainable
Energy Bill that did not make it through into the Act was one
on introducing a fiscal strategy for microgeneration and energy
efficiency combined. That was the only clause that was removed
from the Bill by the Government; the Treasury did not like that
idea.
Q392 Mr Drew: I am not surprised.
Mr Sowden: That is why I said
I would hand over to Keith because we still think that is an important
area of work.
Dr Maclean: I think that there
is certainly an issue for clarity. If you look at the Microgeneration
Strategy that is being pushed through by the DTI, generally heat
and energy efficiency are looked at within Defra and if you look
at this very powerful piece of legislation that was put through,
it was a private Member's bill rather than a government bill that
pushed it through. The leadership issue is quite difficult here
because there are two departments involved in this and so far
the main initiative has not been a government one; it has picked
it up afterwards. I think there is certainly something to be said
for trying to join up the approach to it because heat, power and
transport, for that matter, really have to be brought together
in the approach to reducing carbon. If it is done in this fragmented
way it just creates either confusion and/or perverse incentives
to do one thing rather than another. At the moment, for instance,
heat is not supported through the measures that support renewable
electricity, so you will find that people are being driven to
maximise how much electricity they can produce rather than to
look at what may be more sensible, which is how much heat they
can produce. The micro-wind turbine is a good example of that.
If you used it to produce electricity for heat it would be much
more efficient because you are not trying to change it backwards
and forwards from AC to DC, to synchronise it up with the grid,
looking at all of those, and you can get more energy out of it
by making heat, but you do not get ROC support for that under
the Renewable Obligation, therefore, there is no incentive to
do it. If the measures were based on energy or carbon, that would
help to even that playing field and get a joined-up approach.
Finding the appropriate support mechanism for heat which sits
in Defra is an important parallel activity to the promotion of
the Microgeneration Strategy which is sitting in DTI.
Mr Sowden: On the nitty-gritty
of implementation as well, the lead department there is the DTI
and although they have made some improvements in the resources
they are putting onto implementing the Microgeneration Strategy
that is being led by a middle-ranking civil servant. We think
this agenda merits more senior level attention, we have been lobbying
for more senior Civil Service resource to be dedicated to implementing
the Microgeneration Strategy. The consequence of that was when
the strategy was launched the Government said that it would oversee
implementation with an advisory group. The strategy was launched
in March of this year and the first meeting of the strategy group
takes place on 12 December, so that is how long it has taken to
get the implementation framework in place properly. That is not
to say things have not been happening, a handful of actions have
been delivered and I think we should acknowledge that and give
credit where it is due. To launch a strategy, the bulk of which
has a two-year implementation timetable, and then to take the
best part of nine months even to set up a steering group to oversee
that, indicates that there is a lack of commitment and a lack
of priority, of resource being allocated to this in the DTI.
Q393 Mr Drew: Has the legislation
in Mark Lazarowicz's bill really helped? I know something about
the ownership of it and the negotiation between different departments
that had to go on to get it into statute. Is the legal framework
now right in this area or is it really fiscal incentives that
we should be concentrating on? I think we were discussing in private
session the new Office of Climate Change, the guru or czar, or
whatever we are going to call that person. Is that something that
you would see? Would that person have the championship role within
government?
Dr MacLean: It is certainly fair
to say that the Lazarowicz Act has paved the way for a lot of
things to happen and that is very much to be welcomed. I think
the issue is that a number of elements which Dave was referring
to earlier on have yet to be properly implemented and that has
to happen. The interaction with fiscal is not an either/or, both
have to be there in place together. The measures that have been
implemented through that and still to come through the Microgeneration
Strategy go along in parallel with the fiscal incentives which
will help with the uptake.
Mr Sowden: Just to give an example.
I was fortunate enough to be invited by DCLG to sit on the steering
group for the review of Permitted Development Orders for microgeneration
and during that process I got to know some of the civil servants
and asked them to what extent the Lazarowicz Act helped them establish
the case within DCLG for the permitted development system to be
reviewed and to quote an official, who I will not name, he said
"It was more like sticking a piece of dynamite behind us".
There are aspects of the Microgeneration Strategy and government
activity which it is arguable whether they would have happened
at all if it were not for the extremely heightened level of interest
in Parliament that the bill created. I think one has to look at
the Microgeneration Strategy and the act together as a package
and question how much would be in the strategy if Parliament had
not wound it up through the bill.
Q394 Sir Peter Soulsby: While we
are on the issue of central Government, can I return again to
some of the things that we have touched on. We have touched on
the Low Carbon Building Programme, we have touched on reverse
selling back to the Grid, we have touched on specific fiscal measures
that might make a difference. Have you done, or are you able to
do, a summary of your views as to what would make a difference
in each of those areas? Clearly, the first one, the sum of £18
million was put in but ran out after a few months in the first
year, commitment only for three years does not sound as if it
is going to make a big difference over a considerable period of
time. I think that it is true over all of these areas from what
you have been saying to us that you have significant reservations
about the extent to which government action is presently on course
and is going to make a difference.
Dr MacLean: I will start on the
Low Carbon Building Programme. The potential for that mechanism
to make a big difference is great because the numbers of units
that need to be built in order to start building up the volume
to get the price down to get into the virtuous circle that we
are wanting to get into is not so enormous. Therefore, something
like the Low Carbon Building Programme, if it is properly focused
and the money is spent in a way that it does give the certainty
for the production of those first thousands of units in the different
areas, that can make a big difference. It is essential that it
is spent in a sensibly, aggregated manner that will allow that
to happen and there are negotiations going on as we speak and
we will see how successful the outcome of those are in putting
together the framework that was proposed around that for splitting
the money into sensible chunks for the different technologies
to support them. There are discussions ongoing at the moment about
finding the most appropriate way of rewarding people for any electricity
that is exported back into the network. I think the studies that
have been done have shown that contrary to most beliefs at the
moment people are being rewarded at a much higher level than is
actually justified by what the suppliers are getting back from
the energy that is exported onto the system, the main issue there
being that there are so many losses in the transactions that need
to be carried out in order to realise value from exporting it
back onto the system, through metering, through settlement and
all the various processes there, that whatever value there is
at the start is eroded back down and often reduced to a level
below zero. At the moment the industry is subsidising the process
by providing a reward at whatever level for what is going on.
Q395 Mr Drew: Can you explain this
a bit more because I do not understand what you are saying. I
understand about the way that with net metering people put back
into the Grid but you are saying that individual households are
already getting a greater reward than is anticipated if the industry
subsidised. Explain how that works.
Dr MacLean: If people are exporting
power back onto the network which they are not using themselves
then they are expecting to get a payment for that electricity
and the value of that electricity is—
Q396 Mr Drew: Expecting, but they
are not going to because legally they cannot.
Dr MacLean: They are at the moment.
All the suppliers now have agreements in place, all of which offer
the purchase of the power from that.
Q397 Mr Drew: There is no real money
exchanged.
Dr MacLean: At the moment what
people are getting is greater than the value to the supplier.
Q398 Mr Drew: How?
Dr MacLean: First of all the level
of payment that is due is dependent, for instance, on the time
of day. If electricity is being exported back onto the system,
it is done at a time of day that the value of that electricity
is low. Equally, if you have that net value, you have to subtract
off that the costs of obtaining that value. Those costs include
the metering and the settlement system and the administration
that needs to be gone through in order to do that. Because there
is a relatively low value per unit and there are a lot of individual
systems to do that, those costs are disproportionately high and,
therefore, taking away from the already lower value often of the
units that are being exported back on. The easiest way of overcoming
that is to find a way of rewarding the whole thing which does
not involve the complications of the metering and the settlement
system and which reflects, probably better, the overall position
of carbon and energy rather than trying to split it up. Again,
as I mentioned before, with the other support mechanisms, like
the Renewables Obligation, they can drive behaviour in the wrong
way. If the export becomes something which is, as it is at the
moment, not very attractive people will under-dimension the systems
that they are putting in so that they can use it all to get the
maximum perceived value out of it or there is the perverse behaviour
that can go out of it, that is to say, "I am damned if I
am giving that to somebody else, I am going to make damn sure
I use it all myself and increase the consumption". The alternative
extreme from that is one which if the export is too valuable,
it then starts driving the over-dimensioning of everything to
produce more and more electricity to then get the benefit. That
was something which happened with the older CHP schemes where
the real reward was for the electricity produced rather than the
heat and the systems got bigger and bigger in order to try and
get lots of money back from the electricity until the price collapsed
and the whole thing went wrong. It has to be much simpler and
it has to avoid the distortions that the current approach can
drive.
Mr Sowden: Could I come back to
the original question about the Low Carbon Buildings Programme
and the link into longer-term policy measures, of which reward
for power exports and getting that sorted out is an important
one. The £80 million that exists for the Low Carbon Buildings
Programme can be spent intelligently in a way that helps to get
the industry more self-sustaining. We go through this exercise
about every three years where the industry berates the Government
for not providing enough grant subsidy. The mindset we really
need to be in is that we are an industry that is so big that the
Government cannot afford to support it any more through grants
and we need longer-term, more enduring policy mechanisms to do
that. I will give a tangible example. At the moment the household
grant for a solar thermal system is approximately £400. The
submission we have made to Defra and the DTI on a policy mechanism
to support renewable heat in the micropower sector we calculate
would yield a value of a few hundred pounds, but it is an enduring
policy mechanism. What we are interested in is a design for the
grant scheme that encourages the industry to become more efficient,
which is important in the early years but we need to be weaning
the industry off that kind of arrangement, leading us towards
longer-term policy mechanisms that give equitable access to the
carbon value of what those mircopower systems are achieving, equitable
access alongside other low-carbon solutions. Grants are an important
support mechanism for the industry—
Q399 Chairman: Could I just be clear
about what you are saying there. Are you suggesting that if the
microsystems reduce the carbon outputs, for example, of major
power generators, that is a gain to them, for example, in the
costs of meeting requirements under an Emissions Trading Scheme;
in other words, they are gainers from that. Therefore, if there
is a gain, somehow that gain in monetary terms has got to be captured
to come back round the cycle to enable the saving mechanism to
work because at the moment what you have described is a mechanism
where government takes public pounds and decides that those public
pounds can be deployed in this area inevitably at the expense
of something else which is a public objective. Your argument,
if I have understood it, is to get away from that to the more
virtuous circle, is that right?
Mr Sowden: That is the essence
of it, except that rather than it just being public pounds, I
would call them "policy pounds" because we have different
policy mechanisms to support de-carbonising the economy.
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