ESTA Viewpoint

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Calm needed after the turmoil of 2022

Mervyn Pilley looks back at the upheavals of the past 12 months and hopes that UK energy policy will lead to calmer waters in 2023

Mervyn Pilley

Executive director of ESTA (Energy Services and Technology Association)

s I write the first column for

A2023, I am looking back on yet another year of turmoil and change. I try to think back to April 2019 when I joined ESTA and wonder if I could possible have had any clue as to what was going to happen in the subsequent three and a half years. Certainly not is the answer, no one could have done, to be honest.

Looking back on 2022, there was little good news in the UK and internationally, but for ESTA members the energy crisis at least meant that many of them have been frantically busy helping their clients to reduce their energy costs and equally recover some of their pandemic-induced work losses.

I was also very pleased that the Chancellor – the third one of 2022 – finally used two key words in the autumn statement – energy efficiency. Hurrah, thought I, but the initial enthusiasm was tempered somewhat as the detail of the additional spending commitment started to come out. Is the additional spending going to just be spent on insulation in homes without any overarching national retrofit plan – the answer may regrettably be yes. On that front still no credible solution on just where all of the required installers for these measures are going to come from. The SME installer sector has been very badly affected by the failure of the green homes grant scheme and it is going to need a lot of direct government funding into sector training in the very near future if the additional funding is not going to be wasted.

Energy effi ciency information

No obvious money is going to be spent on commercial and non-domestic energy efficiency needs, with the finally issued energy efficiency information campaign looking as though it is just going to amount to ‘the secretary of state presents from his own home!'

So much went wrong in 2022 both for the energy sector at large and also for UK businesses and the economy. The Government just did not get the blindingly obvious message that energy efficiency really is the first fuel and is therefore an energy supply and consequently also an energy security issue. As a result, they have committed to eye watering investments in long term solutions such as carbon capture and storage and building nuclear power stations at the same time messing around with the renewables sector both in planning and taxation areas. We used our 40th anniversary to remind them just how long the energy management solution has been around but sensible lobbying activity continued to become an ever harder job as both Ministers and policies came and went. An election is needed but in the meantime the policy freeze in key energy related areas cannot continue for another two years.

Ofgem continued to make a total mess of their role in 2022. Unfortunately they managed to fall between both stools in trying to represent both the suppliers and consumers at the same time. Supplier failures seemed to slow down although we, the taxpayers, are going to be paying for the Bulb fiasco for many years to come. In true shutting the stable door long after the whole heard has gone mode they announced a tightening up of new entrants to the sector financial criteria. It is hard to see why any company would now be looking to enter the market.

At the time of me writing this it would seem that UK businesses are expected to try and plan for the future when they don’t have a clue what, if any, financial support in relation to

The Government just did not get the message that energy efficiency is the first fuel

their energy costs will be coming from the Government. Business failures have increased substantially in 2022 meaning greater costs for us all and less tax take for the government.

Little progress for change

COP27 came and went and the overwhelming feeling was that little real game changing progress had been made post COP26. This feeling was certainly not helped by a last minute, will-he/won’t-he appearance by the Prime Minister who seemed to be going backwards in his speech followed by the confirmation of a new coal mine opening in the UK.

On the ESTA front, things picked up during the year and we returned to physical member meetings again as well as attending a number of trade shows. Rising venue costs certainly didn’t help us and the fact that our members were on the whole frantically busy helping their clients in the crisis continued to reduce the time that they had to talk to/engage with their trade association. Towards the end of the year, I have had some exciting discussions over a number of new ESTA groups that we are introducing in 2023 and some new collaboration projects. I look forward to recruiting more members this year and running a more active physical meetings programme, probably using members’ premises as the venues.

To conclude I would wish all members, stakeholders and partners of ESTA a far more prosperous and stable New Year than they have experienced in the last three years. ■