The Big Six and the Governments incompetence around Energy Security is doing my nut!

With EDF being the latest of the Big 6 to announce an Energy Bill rise, it got me thinking, Energy Security is so imperative.  (http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2306416/edf-attempts-to-bounce-government-into-green-levy-reforms#!)

What struck me about the EDF rise is the implication that if the Green Levies (that are adding only £112 to the average £1287 family dual fuel bill – see my last blog https://talentforsustainability.wordpress.com/2013/10/11/energy-bills-politics-and-climate-change/) are scrapped or reduced in line with their expectations then no further price prices will be warranted.  On the other hand, and to put it bluntly, if the Government don’t scrap or reduce Green Levies in line with their expectations, then further price rises will occur.  This is political lobbying at its very best (or worst depending on what way you look at it)

On the face of it, that’s fine. However, we all know that Energy bills are highly political at present and this firmly puts the ball back into the Government’s court and basically urges them to cut green levies or face the consequences of disgruntled voters wanting answers.

I think it’s important that we again revisit what makes up an Energy Bill and where the cost to consumers comes from.  There’s a good summary here:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2013/oct/10/green-taxes-energy-bill-fuel-sse-price-rising

I also believe that it’s vital that we assess our Energy Security – do you as a consumer, as a member of your community really want to be held to political ransom by an Energy Supplier? Well that seems to be what is happening.  EDF are publicly exerting pressure on the Government to reduce Green Levies.  If the Government buckle, which I anticipate they will do because they [seem] to perceive that voters would rather have fractionally lower energy bills over a greener more sustainable supply etc, then this leaves the Government at the mercy of further demands.  So in backing EDF with Hinckley point, you then gift EDF even greater negotiating power over our Energy – how secure is that? What are the implications should EDF or any of the other Big6 decide that they don’t like something else?

It is in times like this where we all need to assess our Energy Security and what sort of future we want to “generate”.  For me, a decentralised, community-led Energy Supply is the only way forward for cleaner & more secure energy supply.

Have I missed something?  

Energy Bills, Politics and Climate Change.

Hopefully, we’re all pretty much aware of the threats around energy security, the cost of climate change and the benefits that the low carbon economy is proving to bring to the UK GDP? No, well a few relevant snippets then:

Around a million people were employed in low carbon sector in 2010/11 (BIS LCEGS report for 2010/11, April 2012) and “over a third of the UK’s economic growth in 2011/12 is likely to have come from green business” CBI http://www.cbi.org.uk/media/1552876/energy_climatechangerpt_web.pdf  

Nothing like putting a value on something and making the “social” case for sustainability and renewables…

We now find ourselves in a time and place where Energy Bills are increasingly political.  This has been fuelled (no pun intended) by Ed Milband’s somewhat naïve, political-point-scoring statement that the Labour Government would freeze Energy Prices.  See the background here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24461893.

On the back end of this increasingly heated political debate, SSE have just recently announced prices rise of 8.2% with SSE’s Will Morris saying that “We’ve done as much as we could to keep prices down, but the reality is that buying wholesale energy in global markets, delivering it to customers’ homes, and government-imposed levies collected through bills – endorsed by all the major parties – all cost more than they did last year.  You can read more about this here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24475868

 

Subsequently there’s a lot of largely negative PR being aimed at Renewables and the cost of “greening” on our energy bills but in reality the costs are proportionately very small and this is a message that we all need to communicate.  

@regenSW have done an excellent job of summarising this as follows and I’d encourage everyone to share these facts with their colleagues and friends:

•        Green measures are responsible for £112 of the average £1287 family dual fuel bill.

•        Of this, £37 is down to renewable subsidy (£30 ROCs and £7 FiT) – less than three percent of the average bill.

•        £47 pounds goes to ECO and other energy saving measures that reduce bills for those in fuel poverty.

 

You will find some useful Guardian infographics here http://goo.gl/J5Gimx.

Fossil fuels are costing us dearly, between 2004 and 2010 dual fuel bills rose by £455, of which £382 was due to soaring gas prices (http://is.gd/EIIXiz).

Globally subsidies for fossil fuels are $409 billion compared to $66 billion for renewable energy (http://is.gd/bTK7Iy).

The annual government grant to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is £2.3 billion. Divide that by £26.3 million households and you find the average cost per household of dealing with nuclear waste is £87 http://www.nda.gov.uk/aboutus/

 

 

 

 

Google is on the way to quietly becoming an electric utility

Interesting Read this. Cash rich corporates who want to invest could prosper in cleantech and secure energy security moving forward and not just for themselves…

Getting my head around Contracts For Difference (CfD) and what it might mean for Renewables

 

 

Its been a busy week so far.  I was at the Energy Event yesterday where is was good to see some old and new faces around the energy efficiency piece and on Tuesday I attended a RegenSW event on Contracts for Difference (CfD) in the vain hope I could finally get my head around this. 

CfD it would seem, has some considerable issues that need ironing out.  Probably one of the most significant of these was put forward by but Alan John – Partner at Osborne Clarke who delivered a very insightful overview of CfD from a legal perspective.  One of the most significant points he raised was around Clause 44 which in layman terms basically says that the CfD Counterparty Limited don’t have to pay you and won’t be in breach of contract if they don’t have the money to pay. As we know investors like certainty and it will be interesting to see whether this Clause is amended moving forward through the consultation phase and, if not, whether financiers will even go near CfD.

Alan also suggested that he wouldn’t be suggesting his clients to jump into CfD first – not until a few others have at least experienced it.  This is quite an interesting point, considering that if Nuclear and Offshore Wind come on line, then they might absorb huge swathes of the Levy control Framework (which is not a budget apparently but a maximum allocation). My thinking is that nuclear and offshore wind will probably come on line at the latter end of the period.  It would therefore seem that at this stage they could potentially take up a significant amount of the LCF “budget” forcing others from the first come served basis into the auction stage at a minimum. 

It seems that the CfD could, assuming Nuclear and Offshore Wind do come on line, favour the bigger companies with deeper pockets and larger schemes. It might also mean that smaller renewable energy developers might be better off electing to get their CfD contracts early doors but do they need to when the RO is still running.  Either way there is going to be a lot of strategic game playing in terms of who jumps first and when and some significant uncertainty post RO but there’s nothing new there. 

At the end of the day there is a lot that needs to be ironed out and as DECC admitted, a limited time frame to do so. 

What do you think – Is CfD a good thing or a bad thing for the renewables industry?  What do you envisage to be the core issues that need ironing out through the consultation? 

@bbc5live #energyday: An overview

@bbc5live #energyday: An overview

It was last week when one of my colleagues, who has nothing to do with sustainable energy, told me that the “Beeb” were putting on #energyday and I think this goes some way to explaining why I think the BBC has done such a great job in dedicating a whole day to broadcasting around the very (and I might be slightly bias) crucial subject of Energy.

‏@bbc5live reaches the masses – it transcends vast swathes of society that would otherwise not be open to some of the ongoing dialogue and challenges inherent within the energy industry.

As well as the station being powered by renewables and, amongst other things, a team of cyclists looking to maintain the power required to keep the broadcast on air, there was also some fun thrown in – Peter Allen ran around in a giant Hampster Wheel and Nicky Campbell (@NickyAACampbell) as well as Richard Bacon (@richardpbacon) both embarked on a pedal power challenge.

There were some heavy weight guests.  The CEO’s of a number of the big six, Government ministers in the form of Ed Davey (@EdwardDaveyMP) and Greg Barker (@GregBarkerMP) were all in attendance at some point through out the day.

Unsurprisingly, one of the most significant themes running through the day was the focus around rising energy bills and increasing fuel poverty.  A few polls were carried out indicating that more than a third of people in the UK are concerned about paying for their heating bills this winter http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23957608.

Interestingly, and I can’t find a reference for this now but I’m sure that around 70% of listeners were in favour of nationalising energy which for me really highlights the mistrust of the energy suppliers as prices continue to rise as do their profits.  Whilst the energy suppliers seemed to suggest that rising prices are seemingly a result of a greater focus on renewables and energy efficiency, the polls also suggested that the public as a whole don’t mind paying more for energy if it’s a result of investing in cleaner more renewable forms.  55% of respondents (http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2292854/poll-uk-energy-policy-is-not-green-enough) indicated that they are prepared to pay more for green electricity.  This for me is a core debate. What would you rather have – cheaper energy bills or more renewables?  Personally I’m not necessarily sure these have to be stand alone and its not black and white, especially when you consider that there are ESCos in the market operating fully maintained biomass installs at or cheaper than grid.  However it does raise some interesting points around scenarios and choices

In the lead up to the day I was hopeful that the concept of crowdfunding for renewables would be given some airtime – I know the likes of Abundance (@AbundanceGen) and Trillion(@TrillionFund) were also, unsurprisingly, keen to see this discussed as we shared a few tweets.  And on this point, I really did think that with the polls indicating that we want a cleaner energy mix and our energy nationalised, could crowdfunding really give rise to community energy on a mass, national scale?  Yes the big six could be nationalised (this is quite unlikely when you consider the ownership of the likes of EDF) but as a nation we could own all our energy by being the investors in it in the first instance. Each home could be an energy centre, community energy groups could develop larger district heating schemes, wind farms, biomass plants – could decentralised energy on a mass, “nationlised” scale actually be feasible? [I’m immersed in a dreamy, disruptive state of consciousness right now as I write] I suggested in a tweet aimed at Paul Massara, the CEO of @npowerhq, that his comment that “Community Energy was a great model” could ultimately put the big six out of business but I suppose it’s not just about choices for communities and consumers but also about choices for the big six.

Elsewhere over the course of the day there was quite significant talk around Smart Meters and one caller really demonstrated how uptake/benefit and success could be restrained by mistrust of the energy suppliers. There definitely has to be some solid thinking around how Smart Metering will benefit the consumers and this need to be communicated.

Greg Barker got some stick around the green deal regarding uptake and how the numbers just simply didn’t work but he was absolute resolute in his defence insisting that the Green Deal is “not flash in the pan scheme”  and that the scheme is ” a 20 year programme” that was “long term” I do have some sympathy for Greg – the amount of stick he’s got over the years around first the feed-in-tariffs and now the green deal must make his Monday mornings a daunting experience.  Rather him than me.

All in all it was a great day of broadcasting and I hope that it goes some way to addressing two of the key challenges we face as a society – energy security and climate change. What do you think? Did you listen to the show? Could the disruptive concept of Crowdfunding and community energy projects be the answer to the “nationalisation” of energy that the nation graves?

Regular Energy Audits to become compulsory for Business?

Regular energy audits for all businesses bigger than an SME are likely to become a norm in the UK following the ongoing consultation around ESOS – Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme, which is the UK’s Governments response to implementing Article 8 of the EU Energy Efficiency Directive.  You can view the consultation document here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/211977/20130708_-_ESOS_Consultation_Document_FINAL.pdf 

I am bias but Energy Efficiency is a good thing.  Businesses can reduce costs to the bottom line – I remember recruiting a head of energy management for a large retail group a few years back.  They had one of the biggest property portfolios in the UK, second to the MOD I believe and, if I remember rightly, an Energy Bill of around £40 million.  Knocking 10-15% off that makes business sense but it also has a positive impact on a brand as you are cutting carbon and “helping the environment”.

ESOS is likely to force the hand of business (at least to do something) and as a consequence there is likely to be an increase in demand for Energy Management Talent and therefore [hopefully] my services.

Thinking ahead is always a good thing and I can certainly make some introductions to businesses and/or trusted contractors that can provide Energy Audits and wider energy consultancy work or recruit a full-time Energy Manager.

Even putting ESOS aside, it makes business sense to have an energy management team or an energy manager on board, working to cut the cost of your energy bills, reduce the risk around energy security and make some positive noises about the good work you are doing cutting carbon which, as we call know is one of the key GHG culprits in Climate Change. 

What are your thoughts? Will ESOS have an impact and drive business and jobs?

 

Call for Sustainability & Cleantech themed Infographics

I naturally spend a fair bit of time looking for the latest innovations within cleantech & sustainability to realise opportunities and share anything interesting with my network.

From time to time, I’m stumbling across some pretty awesome infographics detailing green jobs, cleantech, wind turbines, circular economy – all things really. I quite often share these through my linkedIn network but then they’re just lost.  

With a commitment to social media and sharing, I’m putting together a Sustainability Infographic collection and utilising Pinterest.  

Have you seen any good infographics recently? Please share them and I’ll add them to the mix as a central resource for eternity. 

Candidates: Why develop your Personal Brand?

Candidates: Why develop your Personal Brand?

Talent acquisition – it’s a bit of an art.  Good recruiters will use a variety of techniques to find and assess candidates.  Long gone are the days where advertisements alone reap rewards. 

Social media is increasingly being used. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest and many more social media sites are being used to identify and target candidates.   

You can also expect that employers will look to assess your suitability for a role by what information you choose to share, good or bad, through your social media channels.

Think – what does a picture of you beer in hand suggest to future employers about your professionalism? What results do you see if you Google yourself? What information and pictures do you see?  Can everyone take a look around your facebook pictures? 

So there is very much a negative of social media – you need to be careful about information you choose to share as sharing the wrong information could harm your employability. I’ve certainly made judgements on a candidate and also a business by the way they appear.  Brand is vital to first impressions and first impressions are difficult to displace.

But there is also a positive side of social media and a journey that I’d encourage all serious about developing their career to go on.  An active and established network on LinkedIn, for instance, could show potential employers that you can network – that you can make and establish business relationships that will have a positive impact on their bottom line.

But there’s also a deeper reason for developing a personal brand.  The businesses that you join will benefit from your personal brand. People buy people at the end of the day and if you’ve built up a large network and huge amount of content within social media, that’s something a business can benefit from. 

From what I’ve heard, the indication is that Google is going towards something called authorship in the way it calculates SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).  We all should hopefully know that where your company appears on Google when a potential client does research into purchasing has a massive impact on inbound business.

Authorship is likely to place more emphasis on individuals and how they rate within a particular industry.  A Sustainability professional with an established following on social media (word press, google+, twitter etc.) is likely to have a really positive impact on search results. 

For business leaders in particular, having this sort of positive impact is vital to the value added you bring to a business.

Some of the ideas and good practice within Digital marketing is pretty new to me, hence why my Blog is a new addition.  I might have had a pretty healthy network for sometime – I’ve got 3000+ energy & sustainability connections on Linkedin, for instance, but if you put Sustainability recruiter into Google I am nowhere to be seen (yet). I’m working on improving my Personal Brand from a SEO perspective and by producing value added content for my network I’m hoping to achieve this. 

It would be great to hear from everyone else about what works for you and any tips you can pass on. 

It’s……Tweets of the Week!

Finding it hard to keep on track of the latest tweets and news from the sustainability and cleantech sector? Then be sure to check out my list of Tweet’s of the Week. 

Seen a good tweet? Let me know and I’ll add it to the next batch.

Energy Efficiency

‏@RenovateEurope #EnergyEfficiency is not only focused on Buildings, it is also related to job creation Have a look at this article http://bit.ly/16BNni8 

@EfficiencyEng_ Building Energy Management Systems are continuing to grow http://ow.ly/nKQOW 

Renewables

@IEA Interested in your country’s energy policies on climate, energy efficiency and renewables, check out @IEA tool http://bit.ly/12YoD2N  

@SolarEnergyNews Major Developments in Perovskite Solar Cells Could Change the World Of Renewables http://goo.gl/fb/pXYSQ 

@ClimateGroup UK government must boost renewable energy funding for businesses, local authorities and schools, MPs say http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/uk-britain-renewables-idUKBRE97412C20130805 … (Reuters)

@GreenpeaceUK Cool infographic – renewables could supply a quarter of world energy in just five years http://bit.ly/16r2HfJ 

@Good_Energy Great news – another poll, this time from @YouGov, shows widespread support for UK #renewables @BusinessGreen http://bit.ly/1c2x1UL  

Energy Storage

@EnergyTribune UK Launches Europe’s Largest #EnergyStorage Trial #unitedkingdom http://www.energytribune.com/78671/uk-launches-europes-largest-energy-storage-trial#sthash.dtd1RFJ1.dpuf …

@GreenEnergyNet 2.5GW of PV energy storage to be installed by 2017 – http://ow.ly/nDdCu 

@RenewableChoice Solar storage is the next big step in solar energy: http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/07/as-solar-costs-drop-energy-storage-solutions-take-center-stage?cmpid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RenewableEnergyWorld%2FwhiF+%28Renewable+Energy+News%29 … 

@EnergyCollectiv Interesting…Impact of #EnergyStorage on Solar #PV Grid Parity – http://ow.ly/nAmGw 

Circular Economy

‏@InstForSustain RT @Veolia_ES_UK Gr8 infographic from an article by @KateRaworth about the #circular economy http://buff.ly/1cqm7HG  http://buff.ly/13RSJAO 

@TomDodson101 Hello, these suggestions sound familiar. No mention of Circular Economy but principles right there. @circulareconomy http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10229659/Householders-should-make-do-and-mend-to-cut-waste-says-Tory-minister.html …

@andymaryalonso With 80%of a product’s impact determined at design phase,what role should designers play in building circular economy http://www.2degreesnetwork.com/groups/waste-management/resources/with-80-products-impact-determined-at-design-phase-what-role-should-designers-play-building-circular-economy/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=Community&utm_campaign=2942801_13.08.06+Editors+Highlights&dm_i=1ILQ%2C1R2OH%2C82VHLA%2C68OZ1%2C1#.UgQ0QFTOLkM.twitter …

Sustainability & a little Innovation….

@KPMG Leading #chemical companies are using a #sustainability agenda to drive innovation and R&D http://bit.ly/18Y9OAX 

Smart Cities 

@wbsustaindev The success of #cities is vital to #jobs creation, innovation, productivity & sustainability: http://wrld.bg/nCgXf 

@ctpoulton Cities In Competition: Branding The Smart City http://ut.co/eR2  via @urbantimes

@sustainmagazine Why smart cities need smart citizens http://sustainmagazine.com/smart-cities-need-smart-citizens/ … #cities #smart #planning #future #UrbanRegeneration

Climate Change Adaptation

@worldresources Reading – Adapting to climate change – one ecosystem at a time (@guardian) http://bit.ly/133Aj6o 

@huntwriter Retrofitting homes for a future climate: emerging trends from recent industry surveys on climate change adaptation http://ow.ly/nFmsc 

Football and Carbon. Best go to the pub.

Football and Carbon. Best go to the pub. Okay. http://ow.ly/nLRLe