The last couple of years have seen huge interest in tackling the energy use and carbon emissions of the UK’s existing housing stock, and it’s been a real pleasure to be a part of that movement. I’ve met some amazing people from the public, private and NGO sectors but few more inspirational than the homeowners who are leading the way.

Since 2009 we’ve been working with pioneers living in a variety of properties with a shared passion to reduce the energy and resource consumption of their homes. Refit West is part of Forum for the Future’s work to make Bristol and the West of England the most sustainable city-region in the UK [http://www.forumforthefuture.org/projects/sustainable-bristol-city-region], and we want to develop a practical model for ‘whole house’ energy efficiency refurbishment which can be rolled out across the country.

Our approach begins and ends with the homeowner: providing information on the most appropriate and cost-effective options for their property; designing solutions to meet their needs; ensuring suppliers give them quality and value for their money; and making capital finance available at terms that benefit them as owners. It’s all about empowering and supporting individuals as they make decisions and commission work on their homes. Never assume these are just houses we’re talking about – we are extremely emotionally attached to our housing stock.

The information currently available to homeowners is at best complex and at worst contradictory. The homeowners we are working with in Refit West, have committed their time to making sense of it and to take action that will disrupt their homes and lives for a period of time, but this is enough to put many off refurbishing their homes. We’ve helped these pioneers overcome many of the common barriers and it’s significant that, while some of the solutions and ‘whole house packages’ are becoming clearer, no two customer journeys have been the same. We need to learn from the experience of these few in order to stand a chance of building a scheme that delivers for the many. Our homes generate a quarter of the UK’s carbon footprint and making them more energy efficient is one of the most cost-effective ways to cut carbon. Our homeowners’ experience helps to explain why, despite numerous national and local initiatives, residential carbon emissions have only fallen by 6% since 1990. We desperately need to move from making 3% cuts each decade to 3% a year to meet our national carbon targets. The Committee on Climate Change wants the built environment to be near zero carbon by 2050. 

Home energy efficiency is rightly seen as a political priority across all parties, and the forthcoming Energy Bill promises to provide the structures for long-term carbon reduction. But will it really deliver? Will it champion and support those pioneers and early adopters who are crucial in developing and building support for mass programmes that can refurbish a million homes a year? Or will it simply create another market opportunity for large commercial interests to cherry pick the easiest works at the expense of a long-term strategic approach?

The answer is being written in Whitehall right now. I believe achieving the carbon reductions required from our 27 million homes will take a cross-departmental approach to make your head spin...DECC, HCA, BIS, Defra, the devolved administrations of  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and significantly the Treasury. It’s great to see two parties working on this together but will we see the coalition work right across government to deliver on our national objectives and in our collective interest?

The Green Investment Bank will be a big step towards a sustainable future, but the government must ensure that it unlocks the potential of local authorities and community groups as well as business.

The Green Investment Bank Commission’s report calls for the government to set up a flexible bank to reduce the risk to private investors investing in greening our power supply, increasing the energy efficiency of our buildings and our transport systems.

The bank, as proposed, would represent a big step towards a low-carbon economy, bringing greater energy security, new jobs and a higher quality of life.  Big advances in green infrastructure, like offshore wind farms, are crucial to change at the speed we need to see in the UK to meet carbon targets.

Yet there is much that a community-led approach to an energy revolution can bring too. And this can create local skilled jobs, strengthen community ties and help people lift themselves to a higher quality of life. Communities in energy cooperatives have saved a third off their energy bills just by changing their behaviour, offshore wind doesn’t do this. So I was delighted that the commission has understood the role of financial investment in this community-led approach too.

However, we also need investment in skills to enable local government and community groups to take advantage of this funding opportunity. At Forum for the Future we have been working with West Sussex County Council, the South East of England Development Agency and a group of local authorities and community enterprises in our Climate Finance initiative to find out how to do this, and making great progress with some inspiring people. Other initiatives like the Ashden Awards and the Low Carbon Communities Challenge are also leading the way.

The challenge now is to scale up so that every community takes action. The advisory group of experts we have been working with are often translators between sustainability and finance teams within local government. Good opportunities are often missed due to a lack of understanding. If we could develop these skills, then local authorities and groups like Transition Towns and energy co-ops will be the experts, creating the new ways of financing local investment in carbon reduction such as green bonds.

Without this development of local skills, most of the funds raised by a Green Investment Bank will go to big businesses to support big projects. This government has led on a big society agenda and the prospect of a Green Investment Bank presents a real opportunity for local people to take action for their future. But it must ensure they have the skills to do the job. The commission’s ambition is to have the bank up and running in six months so we have no time to lose.

Environment policy didn’t break the surface during the UK election campaign.  How will it fare in a coalition of parties at opposite ends of the political spectrum?

Amongst the many surprises was the near absence of environment from the parties’ campaigns and the first ever prime-ministerial debates.  Does it mean the British care less about the environment than in previous years?  Apparently not: the share of the green vote held up and the Green party won its first ever seat in the British Parliament (Caroline Lucas, Leader of the party and long time Member of the European Parliament, taking Brighton from Labour).

But with the parties fairly close to each other on much of environment policy, there were more points to be scored by talking about social policy (we are bracing ourselves for Conservative leader David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’, whatever that means) and of course, dealing with the deficit where we are up there with the European basket cases like Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Having torn lumps out of each other for months on these and other issues, our identikit party leaders now find themselves round the table in Britain’s first true coalition government in 65 years. I’ll spare you the constitutional niceties of how that came about. Suffice to say that political commentators, having had to speculate wildly for several days about what the outcome of the election might be, now find themselves, along with the new government in largely uncharted waters.  In a cabinet of 23, Liberal Democrats hold five posts,  including the responsibility for Energy and Climate Change, which has gone to Chris Huhne, millionaire businessman and one time contestant for the party leadership.   

This appointment throws into sharp relief the strategic and tactical questions this coalition raises for the future programme of the government, not least on environmental policy.  Despite substantial areas of common ground – on the need to cut emissions, boost renewable energy generation, and create a ‘green bank’ for investment in cleantech  for example - the Lib Dems have long been opposed to the replacement of Britain’s ageing fleet of nuclear reactors, whilst the Tories see nuclear as the mainstay of both emissions reduction and future energy security in the UK.  

This issue is such a clear divide, that in the formal agreement about the coalition the issue is dealt with directly, with a bizarre result.   The government (i.e. Huhne) will bring forward a ‘national planning statement’ which would give permission for new nuclear to be built, but then Lib Dems (including Huhne) would be allowed to abstain from the vote bringing it into force.  This in effect means that the Conservatives can push it through on their own, whilst the Lib Dems have (just about) a path of dignity in opposing it and allowing it.

What Green supporters who voted Lib Dem for their anti-nuclear stance will make of this is anyone’s guess.  In any case, both parties are agreed that there should be no public money for nuclear power, and since no nuclear power plant has been built, ever, without such subsidy, it will be interesting to see if any of the utility companies that were lining up to build the new capacity will still find it so appealing.   Lib Dems are presumably hoping not. 

Elsewhere the picture seems a bit clearer, and generally positive for the environment.  Campaigners are elated at the scrapping of Labour’s plans for a third runway at Heathrow.  The coalition agreement makes positive noises about a new high speed rail network – though it’s hard to see how that will be paid for any time soon. Though there’s no new target on the proportion of energy from renewables, investment in marine power and anaerobic digestion also gets a mention, as does a smart grid to link it all up, smart meters to make us all more frugal in using it, and other measures to boost energy efficiency in the home. And along with the promise of public investment in carbon capture and storage and a floor price for carbon comes an undertaking to prevent new coal-fired power without sufficient CCS to meet a demanding emissions standard.  

Some cynics have suggested that Lib Dems have been given jobs that are either so marginal to the Conservative project that they don’t matter, or require them to dip their hands in the blood of ‘dealing with the deficit’ and so alienate their supporter base.   A more nuanced view is that the coalition has enabled Cameron to do what he could not have done with a majority, giving him a reason to be more positive about the environment and Europe and move his party further onto the centre ground.  If he succeeds in finally decontaminating the Tory brand in this way, they argue, he will have laid the foundation for successive Conservative governments for many years to come.

Whatever the motivation, the new team have started with a bang.  Cameron swiftly announced that the government will cut its own emissions by 10% in the next 12 months.  Speaking to staff at the Department for Energy and Climate Change he said ‘I want this to be the greenest government ever’.  Meanwhile Huhne took up the reins at DECC, promising to put energy security ‘at the heart of the UK’s national security strategy’ and to ‘fundamentally change how we supply and use energy in Britain'.  Amen to that.

This blog first appeared in Grist

On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was remarkably intemperate: “pricey conceit… great green rip-off… scam… comically inefficient… squandering the public’s money… perfectly useless…  a swindle… blinded by sentiment” etc, etc.

A lot of this seemed to be aimed, very personally, at Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman of Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries.

Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight.

Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust.

I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful.

But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards.

This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues?

One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control.

But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs.

George Monbiot's article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff

Jeremy Leggett's response: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/

George Monbiot has responded to this blog on Jonathon's personal site, read what he says here.