It had to happen. With serious concerns that energy supplies won’t be sufficient if we have bitterly cold winters, the politicians are thinking harder about how to reduce demand.
Last March the Energy Efficiency Deployment Office came into being and the European Energy Efficiency Directive followed in November.
I suspect there are overpaid graduates in Whitehall and Brussels with no energy industry experience whose sole task is to think up names for new legislative measures. Luckily for them, they don’t lose their jobs if the schemes flop or cause chaos.
Any business employing 250 people or more will have to conduct an audit of each energy-consuming part of its business every four years.
Politicians and civil servants don’t, of course, understand the problem. In most British boardrooms there is no director with overall responsibility for energy efficiency. All too often energy specialists have to work with inadequate resources and little or no top level support.
Fortunately, many of them realise that prices will surge significantly and are taking steps to motivate staff to reduce waste.
Our new Behavioural Change project already has five large energy users – Anchor Housing, Cleveland Potash, Atomic Weapons Establishment, Wessex Water and Thorntons – working in teams to pinpoint how energy can be saved. The energy customers are now king and many of them deserve a crown.
Andrew Bainbridge is the chairman of the Major Energy Users’ Council