Examination of Witnesses (Questions 38-66)
MR PETER
YOUNG AND
MR JOHN
EDMONDS
16 JUNE 2009
Q38 Chairman: Good morning, and thank
you for coming. You have obviously heard what has taken place
so far, and we appreciate your time. I know you have just published
the findings of the interviews that you did with the members of
the CEMEP.[42]
Could you say what their response was on the criticisms which
have been made about the Government's own response to their written
recommendations, firstly, that there were not enough high-level
policy measures to back up the rhetoric in Government and, secondly,
that, nothing was being done to bridge the impending skills gaps?
What do they say about those two issues?
Mr Young: Just perhaps to introduce
why we did that as well, the Aldersgate Group, you are hopefully
familiar with it, it has business, it has third sector organisations,
et cetera, so we look for where there is consensus across all
of those as well as having notable individuals, like John joining
me today. The reason why we did that was we felt that there was
not any accountability or visibility for this whole agenda which
was opened up through CEMEP and the low carbon economy, which
is where that phrase has come from, and we thought it would be
a good opportunity to actually try and give some focus and attention
to that, so that is why we did it. To come on to your question
and to respond initially, the first thing that was quite clear
in terms of a coherent approach is that everybody who had been
involved as former commissioners felt that there had been a tendency
for the recommendations to be picked up by individual departments
and compartmentalised and, as a result, had lost momentum that
could have been there. The feeling, therefore, was that there
was a lack of urgency and perhaps a lack of pace compared with
that which was required if we were to realise the full economic
potential of addressing this really important issue, this fundamental
transition, if you like, in our economy, that it was being downgraded
to something which was perhaps done a bit in individual areas
on the side as a specific initiative which was not sufficiently
large or important compared with the feeling that had grown up
during the course of the actual Commission's life, its year. On
the second area in terms of the skills, the feeling was that the
market at the moment is not making a very clear signal in terms
of the skills that are needed to make this adjustment because
it does not feel clear enough about the pull which regulation
and policy is going to drive for the creation of the jobs and
the needs that will come out of that. As a result of that lack
of market pull, there was a need for more intent from Government
to at least match the needs so that we do not have the stop-start
of an initiative in a particular area creating a demand which
then, in due course, creates a need for skills which creates a
reaction in terms of delivering those skills, by which time the
cycle has really been at quite a low pace compared with what was
needed; it needed a modern, strategic approach matching the demand
of the supply side.
Mr Edmonds: I think there is a
real cast of mind problem here. We are not talking about adding
little bits on to our economy which happen to be green or excising
little bits which happen to be dirty; we are talking about the
transformation and, once you start talking about the transformation,
then you start opening up a whole series of other intellectual
and, frankly, viewpoint problems which have to be accommodated.
The structure of our government is not too good at dealing with
those transformations. The nature of government in this country
tends to be to divide up big and small issues into the various
government silos. This is transformation and it is not clear,
even now with DECC or the new Business Department, who has the
responsibility for that transformation.
Q39 Chairman: What about the Budget
this year with the heralded green fiscal stimulus? What do you
make of all that?
Mr Young: Well, there were some
good bits in it, but it was not sufficient, and again I think
it exemplifies what we are saying, that it does not match the
scale of the rhetoric and the ambition which the Government set
out for itself. Taking one very obvious area in terms of energy
efficiency, there was something additional there which was good,
but it is nowhere near that which could be put in place which
would benefit the economy and, particularly at the moment in a
recessionary time, create jobs in this transition period when
we are moving from a historical building stock into a building
stock that is much more energy-efficient and suitable for the
21st Century. The scale just does not seem to match the expectation
that has built up in terms of some of the ministerial statements
which have been very encouraging.
Q40 Chairman: I like the talk of
the transformation, but, in trying to make the case for it and,
therefore, the case for much more sweeping measures, are we saying
enough about the medium and long-term benefits of being one of
the pioneer countries in decarbonising our economy and our infrastructure?
Everyone talks about the cost, and of course in the very short
term there are some costs, but the benefits of being ahead of
the field are absolutely enormous. My sense is that we are not
saying enough about the huge advantages which will flow to the
country, the prosperity of the citizens, GDP and individual businesses
in all those ways.
Mr Edmonds: First of all, there
is a big understanding deficit. Some of the comments made by Ms
Walley seem to me to be demonstrated in all parts of our national
life. People do not understand what `green' means actually and
on some of the issues the evidence comes out in a rather counterintuitive
way. I remember some very interesting debates about whether terry-towelling
nappies or disposable nappies were the most green, and actually
the numbers show that they are very similar if you take life cycle,
so the whole population actually needs some of the intellectual
equipment and some of the learning in order to deal with these
things. The deficits in industry are remarkable where individual
companies and individual industrial sectors—and the Carbon
Trust has done a great deal of work on this—are not able
to understand the transformations which will be necessary within
their own companies and within their own sectors and the pressures
that there are going to be. Therefore, we have got only the haziest
view of what is up ahead, so, as always happens, when you do not
know what is up ahead, you are subject to short-term fears of
the most acute kind and everybody gets a bit upset and then we
have the sort of displacement activities that are so well known
amongst some other mammals, so we are just not coping with it
because, I think, we do not actually have the understanding to
start getting into this. I notice how quickly the discussion goes
from some of the big picture stuff to some of the tiny, little
details without going through the periods or the issues in between,
so there is an education and understanding problem which is enormous.
Q41 Joan Walley: Can I just come
in on that point because you have come from a trade union background
and what you just set out is basically an approach which is very
much the fundamental basis of the trade union movement in terms
of education which eventually leads to the changes in action.
How do you see that understanding which you have just described
somehow or other being adopted by industry or government departments,
reorganised government departments, local authorities or people
on the ground?
Mr Edmonds: Well, some of the
educational gaps can be filled. Decent environmental foundation
courses at all levels in our education system seem to me to be
absolutely essential and I cannot see them developing very quickly,
which is a big sadness. The debates at workplace level tend to
be pretty sterile and tend to be very tightly connected with health
and safety issues rather than with wider environmental issues
because workplace representatives have no role in this area, they
have no rights, they have no powers and there is nothing equivalent
to the Health And Safety at Work Act in the environmental field,
so it is very difficult for them to get into a valuable discussion,
and of course there is the well-known short-termism that our particular
type of market economy tends to encourage in most companies, so
there are all sorts of difficulties here, but I think putting
something right in the education system would be a very good start
in all of this. Supplement that with workplace discussions which
have real value and you are beginning to move, but we have to
move a long way.
Q42 Joan Walley: Perhaps I will invite
you to my constituency to have that kind of workplace discussion.
Just moving on, you do recognise in the evidence you have given
that the Government has taken some action in tackling the skills
shortages that exist in the environmental sector, and you give
us an example of the National Skills Academy for Power. I just
wonder what these actions do to fill the skills gap that you have
just referred to.
Mr Young: I think what we are
saying there is that that is probably the best of the bunch at
the moment.
Q43 Joan Walley: The best of a bad
job?
Mr Young: Yes, that is right in
terms of a reaction to meeting the skills need, and I think that
is because of the very real issue there has been around the nuclear
sector coming back and also a recognition that we need both the
grid connection and the ability to retain more of the jobs from
the various renewables policy instruments that we have got. That
fits fairly neatly within a sector and, as such, is more comfortable,
it seems to us, for Government to be able to address, but, when
you then follow that through to the wider needs, as you say, flowing
through to local government and wider business, there is a need
to actually penetrate the whole economy with a view as to additional
skills. These are not jobs in the sense of being someone sitting
on the side with this particular badge, but these are actually
skills that need to be part of mainstream employment in many,
many sectors, and that area does not seem to be being addressed
really at all at the moment and that is the bigger challenge and
it is a joined-up challenge because it involves not addressing
it in a compartmentalised way. In terms of success of the power
sector, I think it is very early days. It cannot be addressed
without tackling what John just said, which is again the basics
in terms of science and engineering. We have a very weak science,
engineering and technology base really to address this agenda,
and it is a very technical agenda, it is going to require, and
have a tremendous appetite for, skills in science, technology
and engineering way beyond that which we have experienced in the
past.
Q44 Joan Walley: How long do you
think it will take to introduce these skills to the workforce
within this Power Academy that we are referring to?
Mr Young: Well, longer than we
would like, but I think the general view is that you are probably
talking about a five-year period before you really see a major
effect in the employment sector.
Mr Edmonds: But this is interesting
stuff actually. People like learning about this and, if we were
actually keen to teach people, we would not have any shortage
of takers. We are talking about changing the whole basis of our
industrial economy and in a better world people might get more
obviously excited by that. The biggest industrial change since
the 18th Century, goodness me, this is quite big stuff. It depends
on the level of commitment both from industry and of course from
Government, but you could transform in this country people's understanding
of the environmental essentials in a year if you wanted to do
it.
Q45 Joan Walley: But do you feel
that that urgency is there? It is time that is needed. If we are
going to live up to Stern's expectations and the Climate Change
Committee's objectives that it is setting for the country, is
there sufficient recognition of the time factor? We have not got
five years to wait for these skills to trickle down, have we?
Mr Edmonds: No, it is the cast
of mind problem. We talk about transformation, but we act as if
we are talking about small adjustments and that is a big problem.
As I say, it is partly to do with the structure of government,
but it is also to do with the cast of mind, and some politicians
are not entirely free of these lack of understanding problems,
present company obviously excepted, but I have heard—
Q46 Joan Walley: And there are a
few others.
Mr Edmonds:— politicians
talking in terms which are environmentally illiterate and they
believe that they are making a green case, so there is a lack
of understanding throughout a large part of our society and that
means that planning proper policies becomes extremely difficult.
Q47 Joan Walley: So what can be done
to reduce the amount of time to get people thinking in this mindset
about the skill changes and the transformation that are needed?
Mr Young: Well, one thing that
was said, going back to CEMEP, is that there needs to be ownership
of this somewhere, there needs to be clear ownership. Two years
ago, we were there talking about the UK Commission on Employment
and Skills maybe being given a very specific remit to kick-start
a greater level of activity, but the Government took the view
that it had other priorities at that stage and I see that has
come back on the agenda as something it is going to consider again
now. I think one of the biggest problems with this area is this
absence of accountability. It is only with the current government
structure, when you have sliced and diced this agenda down to
quite small segments, that you find an owner and that owner may
be actually able to drive some change through, but, by definition,
they are only doing it in a small way. We need something at a
much higher level for the skills agenda which is recognising that
every part of the economy needs to be touched by this and every
part of this economy is at risk if we do not have a change in
terms of the supply line in terms of skills and capabilities of
the employed workforce.
Q48 Joan Walley: I think we should
be asking the candidates for the new Speakership whether or not
they have an approach towards greening Parliament in terms of
ownership!
Mr Edmonds: All I was going to
say is that unfortunately at the moment we have rising unemployment
and it looks as if it is going to rise for a good few months,
and maybe more than that, into the future. If we wanted to, we
could give people who are unemployed an opportunity, a deeply
encouraged opportunity, to undertake some environmental foundation
course to enable them to go back into employment with a wider
basis of knowledge than they have at the moment. We could do that
if we wanted and we are not doing it, but we could do it.
Q49 Dr Turner: We seem to have established
that the Government is doing all that it might do in this area,
but what do you think industry is doing to identify the skills
that it is going to need to move to a low carbon economy, and
do you think that the Government is aware of those needs?
Mr Young: I do not think the Government
is as aware as it could be, but I think also that industry is
struggling to see where the long-term policy and signals are going
to give rise to the really large opportunities for investment
and, hence, going to create the needs and their future business
activities. I think one of the key problems we have with any transition
is the fact that the new jobs are not that tangible and visible.
Initially, they come up in a lot of SMEs, they come up in areas
which are reacting to shifts and step changes in policy and, as
a result, the cumulative effect of that is not a very strong signal,
so I think that, whilst there are people in the business community
who can talk about this, and we have the benefit of some of them
on the Group, there is not a very strong signal because it is
quite compartmentalised as well within business, and there needs
to be a more strategic approach and a forum to actually channel
that know-how and that knowledge of what is going to drive the
future economy into government.
Q50 Dr Turner: It seems to me you
have touched on a rather fundamental point, being the nature of
British industry. We have seen before large British industries
die because times have changed and they did not. Is that process
still going on, do you think, because, if we are dependent on
the SMEs to create this transformation, there is lots of evidence
to suggest that that is where the ideas and the consciousness
are, but that is not where the financial muscle is to put it into
practice, so it seems to me that we have got a fundamental structural
problem as well as a skills problem, but the two things go together,
so can you see any way of resolving it?
Mr Edmonds: British industry tends
to be very good when it has an opportunity that falls entirely
into its core business. Chairman, you raised the question of what
happened when we found North Sea oil and gas. Well, okay, we had
oil and gas industries, we had a big oil industry, they saw the
tremendous opportunity for profitability and, because they were
going to invest very heavily, they pulled along a whole series
of contracting and supplying companies with them because there
was the confidence that a great deal of money was going to be
spent. The problem we have now is that we do not have the companies
for the new industrial revolution, so people have got to start
thinking about some of their political and economic models and
whether they fit too well into this particular world, and some
of those models have been challenged quite fiercely in the last
18 months and it has been a great delight to some of us, but perhaps
not to others. The point really is this: that to find quick market-based
solutions to that sort of problem seems to me to go all against
the experience and commonsense. The market will eventually find
solutions, as it did in the 18th Century, but it took an awful
lot of time and an awful lot of misery in between. The TUC has
said that what we need to achieve is what they call a `just transition',
by which they mean a transition with economic and social justice,
and it seems to me that the role of government in intervening
financially is going to be very, very important in all of this
transition because, otherwise, the market moves will be slow and
of course there is no reason to believe that those market moves
will eventually favour British companies against Continental European,
American, Japanese or South-East Asian companies, so we might
lose out very, very badly. That then raises the whole question,
and you would have to sometimes challenge some of these things,
about picking winners. For 30 years, British politicians have
been telling each other that we must not pick winners. Well, maybe
this is the time to start to thinking about picking winners. We
are very careful in our paper to distinguish between picking winners,
where you take one narrow technology and bung money at that, and
taking a group of technologies and saying that somewhere in all
of that there are going to be successes, and there will be some
failures, but there are going to be some successes and you back
it with public money, so the paradigm, I suspect, needs to change,
otherwise we are going to have quite a few decades of misery.
Q51 Dr Turner: Our record of public
investment in industry is very, very poor, is it not? It has not
really happened to any significant extent since perhaps the almost
Stalinist days of CEGB[43]
and the UK Atomic Energy Authority when it was railroading a nuclear
industry into being and so on.
Mr Edmonds: But it did produce
electricity, mind.
Q52 Dr Turner: Do you think that
there is a case for very much greater, albeit targeted, government
intervention in order to secure an industrial future?
Mr Young: Perhaps I can come in
on this in terms of looking at it in a modern business context.
I think the key gap that we are talking about here is that there
is a transition and there has got to be some pace to that transition.
I think there is an awful lot which government can do to attract
business to invest in, to trial and to demonstrate the new technologies
and solutions that are required. I think something that the UK
is quite good at and has been quite good at ever since Nicholas
Stern's Report is articulating what the issues are and perhaps
what some of the solutions need to achieve. If we can set the
bars high enough, and there are mechanisms that have not been
developed far enough, like forward commitment procurement or whatever,
to define what it is that we want to purchase in the future, if
we can give the opportunity to let the innovators come in and
fail as well as succeed with government support to prove what
the best solutions are, then I think a lot of these new seedcorn
businesses that we do have, which are going to fulfil the requirements
and perhaps become our major players in the future, will get accelerated.
We need to put a tension into this gap between the inventions
and the innovators and the big businesses and I think, as we have
said, the big businesses that we have at the moment may actually
not be best suited to the requirements in the future, but, if
we can articulate those requirements and if we can create enough
opportunity to demonstrate those in a true commercial context,
I think that is definitely a role for government; it is the demonstration
part of RD&D.[44]
Q53 Dr Turner: So what you are saying
is that established big businesses are too risk-averse to be interested
in this issue and the innovative SMEs are faced with the valley
of death and the Government is not doing enough to help them across
the valley of death because it is one thing to innovate and produce
something which is on the verge of commercial exploitation, but
it involves a different order of magnitude both in finance, skills,
et cetera, et cetera to get to large-scale deployment. Do you
think that Government is failing to fill that role?
Mr Young: Yes, I think it is failing
in terms of direct support in that kind of way, but I think it
is also failing in not articulating strong enough policy and regulatory
targets which reflect what the needs will be globally in the future.
If we can build up the reputation in the UK of setting those standards
first and of setting them in a sufficiently rigorous way in terms
of decarbonising or in terms of emissions standards or whatever,
then I think we will also attract overseas companies to invest
in the UK because they know that that is the place where they
will get the support to hit the technology not of today or tomorrow,
but even the one after which will get them global sales.
Q54 Dr Turner: I am really supposed
to be asking you questions about the skills gaps, but we have
got into a much more interesting line of questioning. To bring
it back to skills, in order to achieve progress, we are going
to have to address all these skills gaps, so should the Government
not only be giving the sort of support that we have talked about,
but also undertaking targeted activity to plug the skills gaps
because the two things need to go hand in hand?
Mr Young: Absolutely.
Mr Edmonds: On one small, but
very important, skills gap, one of my jobs is that I sit on the
Board of Salix which delivers government money into the public
sector to support energy-saving projects. It has been very successful
and we got extra money out of the Budget to do more of this. One
of the things which we find, particularly when we are dealing
with local authorities, is that a very significant shortage is
of highly trained energy managers, and what typically happens
is that a local authority develops a very good portfolio of projects
that they want to pursue and then some other local authority poaches
their energy manager because there is a massive shortage. It is
fine for the energy manager, he or she moves off probably onto
a high salary, and that local authority then sticks, it cannot
find a replacement. There just are not enough fully qualified
energy managers either in the public or the private sector, so
energy efficiency, which is regarded by us and everybody as a
very important component in this transitional policy, is not being
properly serviced because we do not have the energy managers to
service it, and we keep having these hiccups and pauses, so that
is one area where the skills gap needs to be filled. Of course,
skills need to be related to policies and, if, as we suggest in
our paper, it were decided that insulation standards, smart metering,
electricity infrastructure, water infrastructure and social housing
should be improved on a street-by-street basis, rather in the
same way as we converted to natural gas or something like that,
which could transform energy efficiency in existing houses, then
you could train for that. That would be a very important skill
and would do great things to reduce unemployment levels because
the skills involved are not enormous and they could be taught
fairly quickly and they could be limited in the same way as we
have done in the past.
Q55 Dr Turner: How could you get
industry to take a responsibility in this?
Mr Edmonds: Well, I think this
is one of the roles of regulation. This is the point Peter was
making, that, if Government, through its regulatory framework,
demonstrates that progress, as I would put it, is going to be
made, that by such-and-such a date these standards will have to
be met and by such-and-such a date after that these standards
will have to be met, then it is much easier to get the investment
in industry for reaching those standards because people can see
that survival requires those standards to be met, but also that
money can be made in reaching those particular standards, so developing
a regulatory framework has to exist alongside the necessary investment
in industrial infrastructure.
Q56 Dr Turner: So the hands-off approach
cannot be sustained?
Mr Edmonds: Well, I would say
that, would I not!
Mr Young: Even from our business
members, I think, that is exactly what they are saying, and they
want to know where the responsibility lies so that there is some
continuity there as well that they can believe well beyond the
period of one government or whatever that there is some permanence
there. I think one of the risks we have got is that we have seen
a lot of short-term reactions which are good and, just to pick
perhaps one example, if I may, in terms of the offshore renewable
that we mentioned earlier this morning and the banding of the
Renewables Obligation and raising that up to a factor of two,
which just about satisfied the investors who were about to walk
away from the offshore renewable, at the same time one of our
members, SEEDA,[45]
is still struggling to retain Vestas, the only turbine blade manufacturer,
in the UK. Now, the reason why that is on the point of disappearing
in terms of 700 high-skilled jobs is because the reaction has
been too short-term and there has not been a conviction that the
Government can turn a very clear signal for renewables into a
policy which is going to run through. I think that, for me, is
a good exemplar of the difference between why business is not
in there investing and creating this market demand for skills,
even though the high-level policy is extremely strong.
Q57 Joan Walley: You just mentioned earlier
on the importance of having a strategy, so it is difficult to
see how a green skills strategy can develop if there is not an
overall clear strategy, but nonetheless, I just wonder how you
feel that the range of organisations which do have an interest
in green skills, how well co-ordinated the overall action is and
what can be done to improve it?
Mr Young: My personal experience
is that it has got a long way to go to be co-ordinated and it
starts again from where the ownership of that responsibility lies
and the historical structure, it seems to me, which is compartmentalised,
and this is a cross-cutting theme, and there is not at the moment
a strong enough venue. There are various fora, there are various
dialogues taking place, but there is nothing which, it seems to
me, is able to drive the agenda forward at the pace that is required
when you have to acclimatise between the existing structures,
so I think there is some forum needed there or at least some vehicle
which provides a single point, a long-term strategy, against which
each of the individual components of the skills environment can
then react and contribute.
Q58 Joan Walley: If you were asked,
who, do you think, would you say would be the green leader of
the green skills agenda? Is there a leader out here somewhere?
Who is leading this whole agenda?
Mr Edmonds: You mean who is doing
best at the moment or who should do it in the future?
Q59 Joan Walley: If you were asked
who is actually leading this green skills agenda, who is doing
it? Is anybody doing it, or who should, or could, be doing it?
In previous Environmental Audit Select Committee reports that
we have had on the whole different aspects of the sustainable
development agenda, we have highlighted the importance of a leadership
role to make sure that things go from the top down and to aim
for things to go from the bottom up as well. I do not know where
the leader is for this green skills agenda and I wonder if you
do.
Mr Edmonds: Well, there is not
one. We are back into the transformational problem, that lots
and lots of organisations are bolting little environmental bits
onto their training and saying that it is green training, whereas
looking at the thing afresh and what is going to be needed in
the future is rarely done, but it must be the Business Department,
must it not? If we are talking about a leader in Government, it
must be there. Getting a commitment from the CBI to follow up
their really rather enlightened statements which have been made
over the last six months or so with real activity in this area
would be extremely valuable. To take one small, but very important,
example, everybody knows that construction methods are going to
change massively, the way in which the services are going to be
installed, that we are going to move towards more micro-generation
and, certainly in commercial buildings, more CHP[46]
and so on, so this requires a tremendous development of skills,
but where are the skills being developed? Are they being developed
in the construction industry? Hardly. Well, there is a challenge.
It could be made by the Business Department and the CBI and from
the CBI then to construction members, and most of the big companies
are members of the CBI, so there could be that type of approach.
We then prepare for the future rather than simply sort of stagger
on as each new regulation hits us.
Q60 Joan Walley: I am just wondering
about the UK Commission on Employment and Skills. Was that meant
to have some kind of co-ordinating role?
Mr Young: Well, that was the suggestion
made back in the CEMEP days, that it was then just arriving on
the scene and seemed to be a vehicle which could provide that.
It is, as I understand it, an organ which will now be an organ
of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, whatever
the name is, and I think actually that what we are just seeing
there is that we have actually had three departments in two years
with that responsibility which, for me, says it all, but that
some kind of commission or committee or forum which is under the
new Business Department should be given this task.
Q61 Joan Walley: Was this included
in the 39 words or however many words there are in the new title
of the new Business Secretary of State, this green agenda aspect
of it with reference to the green agenda?
Mr Young: I cannot recall, I am
afraid. I do not know, but I doubt it.
Q62 Joan Walley: I am just wondering
how fit for purpose the—
Mr Edmonds: His personal title
is a bit complicated, so it used up a lot of the words, but no,
I have seen no indication of that at all. I am not sure that the
co-operation between the Business Department and DECC is as close
as it should be in this particular area because DECC is meant
to be producing the policy and the foresight for the future and
so on and, as I understand it, the Business Department needs to
be the operational arm. Well, that type of co-operation would
be extraordinarily valuable.
Chairman: It all sounds really quite
simple. We know what we are trying to do, we know where we need
to get to and the benefits of doing so are enormous in terms of
jobs and future prosperity, so why does it not happen? Is there
some kind of cultural block to this or have people got their heads
in the sand?
Q63 Joan Walley: Or is it vested
interests elsewhere?
Mr Edmonds: There is this silo
problem which we all know about in government, but there are devices
for overcoming that as well. There is the problem of the lack
of understanding, and we talked about that earlier, and there
is also the problem of concern about just how big this task is
and, therefore, as Peter says, people tend to try and dice it
up so that they can find little bits that they can chew. The task
is not a particularly difficult one and the solutions are not
particularly difficult, although doing it will be expensive, but,
as the man said, if you think education is expensive, you should
try paying the price of ignorance, and that, I think, is a very
good slogan for this particular area. If we are so far behind
the curve, as Dr Turner was saying, then we had better do something
really quite quickly.
Q64 Mark Lazarowicz: In your report,[47]
you mention two specific programmes which could be significantly
moving towards a low carbon economy. One is for a street-by-street,
house-by-house energy efficiency programme and the other is a
public procurement programme. How feasible are these programmes,
given the current Government approach to the wider issue, and
what needs to be done, in your view, to make them happen?
Mr Young: There needs to be more
money put in on the energy efficiency side and there needs to
be a bit more vision in terms of, if you are going to go and make
that intervention, what is the maximum benefit upgrade, if you
like, you can achieve. If you have got someone going into a house
and they are putting in loft insulation, is that enough? It would
be good to talk a bit more about what else could be done there.
In the area of energy efficiency, the key thing about that is
that it is a transitional activity, and I am not saying it is
a sort of distraction while we deal with the main event we have
just been talking about, but it is something which will give an
immediate benefit to the overall economic well-being and competitiveness
of the country as well as providing jobs and demonstrating actually
the degree of employment opportunity there is from tackling this
agenda.
Q65 Mark Lazarowicz: But, given we
all know this and people have been saying this for five, ten years
or more and there are all sorts of programmes out there which
are meant to make it happen, why is it not happening?
Mr Edmonds: There is a real understanding
problem. You say that everybody knows, but I am not sure that
everybody does know. There is still a large proportion of the
population who think that energy conservation is about switching
off lights. Well, I am not against switching off lights, I think
it is a very sensible thing, but work done by the Carbon Trust
demonstrates quite easily that, if you are really looking at improving
energy efficiency, you should buy better kit, whether that is
domestic kit, industrial, commercial or whatever; that is the
thing that persists. Second to that is to properly look after
and maintain the kit you have got, and that is short of persistence,
but it still has some value. Lastly is behavioural change, which
is kind of useful, but you need to reinforce it every two weeks,
otherwise people forget.
Q66 Mark Lazarowicz: Well, let me
rephrase the question. Maybe there are sections of the general
public who do not realise this, but policy-makers, Government
both local and central, know this and know—
Mr Edmonds: No, they do not. It
is not many months ago when people were being told, "Do your
bit and switch the lights off". Well, fine, I am not against
that, but the idea that that makes a major contribution towards
energy-saving without the most enormous and repeated reinforcement
is absolute nonsense. If you transformed the efficiency of the
white goods that people have in their houses, you could save a
lot of energy. You just make the white goods more efficient. How
do you do that? You regulate to make sure that particular products
cannot be sold and you make sure that those products which are
sold are properly labelled in energy efficiency terms. Now, we
all know that is the way to do it, but it is not done. Now, that
is one of the problems because people still take the simple way
and say, "What we need is a behavioural change". Of
course we need a behavioural change, but we also need better kit
and better maintenance and then we save energy.
Mr Young: We also need a joined-up
approach. Just at the moment from the Landfill Directive in what
has been a huge effort by local authorities to try and get behaviour
changed at the household level in terms of recycling, there is
no connection whatsoever between that with respect to schemes
that are being set up to encourage people to insulate their lofts,
nor is there any connection with respect to how to improve the
energy efficiency of the energy-using equipment in your home.
Those three things are all going on—
Q67 Mark Lazarowicz: So what kind
of connection do you envisage there?
Mr Young: Well, if you packaged
it up against this low carbon economy, however you want to put
it to the public, which is actually about making yourself resource
efficient and, hence, your economic expenditure lower and the
benefits which come from that, you could make one intervention,
cover all of those things at one time and go to that one behavioural
change, instead of confusing the public by actually exhorting
them to do independent things, some of which are actually directly
conflicting because of the different responsibilities and the
bodies which are interacting with the public. The same applies
to industry and industry is also confused by that. They have a
number of different schemes that come to them, looking at one
particular element, and they have particular performance indicators
which drive them down one particular route rather than looking
at the overall low carbon, resource-efficient solutions which
would bring them the most benefit.
Mr Edmonds: My local authority
is very keen that before we put out the empty cans of dog food
in the little recycling skips that they give us (and uncovered,
but never mind about that) we wash them very thoroughly. We happen
to be in a water-stressed area, so we are going to use a lot of
water to wash the cans before we put them out. Now, someone ought
to be doing some thinking about this, should they not? That does
not seem to me to be a very wonderful way of making the connections
that Peter is talking about.
Chairman: Well, thank you very much for
coming in and for covering a good amount of ground today; we much
appreciate the time you have given to us.
42 Note: (CEMP) Commission on Environmental
Markets and Economic Performance. Back
43
Note: (CEGB) Central Electricity Generating Board. Back
44
Note: (RD&D) Research, Development and Demonstration. Back
45
Note: (SEEDA) South East England Development Agency. Back
46
Note: (CHP) Combined Heat and Power. Back
47
Note: The Aldersgate Group, Commission Statement: Driving
investment and enterprise in green markets, June 2009 (http://www.aldersgategroup.org.uk/public-reports/view-document/10) Back
|
