Public meeting on the Energy Review 2006

With Malcolm Wicks Minister for DTI, Nicky Gavron, Deputy Mayor of London, Hywel Lloyd, Chair SERA, Tuesday 21st February 2006

SERA held a public meeting with the minister in charge of the Energy Review and the Deputy Mayor of London, whose office has been leading the way on progressive energy policy over recent months. Around seventy people attended the meeting, ranging from environmental organisations and socialist groups, to business leaders, SERA members, and as one participant put it "consumers of energy".

Hywel Lloyd, Chair of SERA, gave an outline of SERAs working document on our submission to the Energy Review, which sets out the principles that should underline our energy policy - he strongly emphasised localism as the key to meeting energy efficiency objectives, harnessing micro renewable technologies and making local communities and households' producers of their power. The Ministers speech lamented this 'time of change' as we move away form being the self-sufficient energy island we once were and become net importers of gas and oil - he claimed that by 2020 80% of our gas may be imported.

The minister said that the 60% CO2 reduction target is a demanding target but that the Government will be considering a whole range of measures to achieve it. He singled out micro generation as crucial to reconnecting people with awareness of their energy consumption, but did not emphasise the potential of micro renewables to fill the energy gap arising from the shut down of older power stations (including Nuclear) over the next fifteen years which experts widely agree is possible, including a number of SERA MPs in their submission to the energy review ('What's in the Mix: the future of energy policy').

On carbon capture the minister said that people would have to accept that the world will be burning huge amounts of coal (particularly China and India) and that therefore this technology will have to be part of the solution to achieving CO2 reductions. Crucially the minister said that "renewables would provide much of the answer but not 100% of the answer", signalling again that although the review process has yet to finish, new nuclear power is on the cards. Nicky Gavron gave a summary of the many inspiring developments taking place in London such as carbon free bus services, microgeneration and carbon neutral building developments.

Asked about the forthcoming Microgeneration Strategy, the Minister spoke of the importance of "changing hearts and minds" through micro generation but declined to respond specifically as to exactly what the "method of hypothesis and test", he spoke of would include. Nicky said she was excited by the prospect of developing micro generation in London and pointed out that even China has recently shown much support for microgeneration by considerably liberalising their energy market. Whilst the high cost of micro generation technologies mean that they are unobtainable by many income groups, the minister said that higher income groups, who might consider spending a large sum of money on a flat screen television could just as easily spend this money on installing, for example, a mini wind turbine to their homes - perhaps microgeneration could to replace wide screen televisions as the latest fad of the well off.

Speaking on fuel poverty the Minister said that recently these concerns have been drawn together with environmental concerns - income maintenance, winter fuel payments and energy efficiency measures were all helping to address fuel poverty, however, these will need to be improved on in the future. Hywel spoke of the need evaluate policy measures in ways that address their root causes - fuel poverty payments could be reduced if all the homes of fuel poor were insulated and made efficient use of fuel. Nicky refereed to Woking council, which has achieved a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions from buildings. Their pensioners are already achieving the governments 6% 2020 target on the percentage of their income spent on energy.

Energy from waste presents huge opportunity for CO2 reductions and Nicky Gavron spoke of the possibility of a single London waste authority that could use all bio waste to power London homes. Other issues were raised on transport, including why investment into road transport exceeds investment into rail, which is three times more energy efficient, smart metering, the forthcoming report of the nuclear waste commission this summer, the Thames Gateway housing development and how to ensure that the Governments revised building standards are met - this is both a lively and critical time for environmental politics.