New Energy World™
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Hot energy policy debate considers the role of citizen engagement in achieving net zero
22/5/2024
10 min read
Feature
In April, the Energy Institute hosted its first Energy Policy Debate of 2024 at its London offices in New Cavendish Street. Speaking to a packed room, in a discussion moderated by Mike Gibbons CBE FEI, Senior Independent Director of Bluefield Solar Income Fund, four leading industry and academic speakers discussed the topic: 'The energy sector can't reach net zero without citizen engagement'. Will Dalrymple, Senior Editor, New Energy World, provides an edited version of the two-hour, standing-room-only event, beginning with opening remarks and then moving on to questions and answers.
Professor Rob Gross, Director, UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), put UK energy policy in a historic perspective: ‘There's a lot happening in the UK policy world at the moment, as there has been over the last 20 years. In some respects, it’s back to the future. The Climate Change Act (2008) is internationally-renowned and world leading. Policies of the electricity market reform of 2013 brought forward the contracts for difference (CfD). And more recently, there was the incredibly wide-ranging and far-reaching piece of legislation – the 2023 Energy Act. I think it’s fair to emphasise quite a strong supply-side bias and a particular preference for some technologies, notably offshore wind and nuclear.’
He continued: ‘What we’ve failed to do over the last 10 years is to engage in a public dialogue around this change. As a result of that, you see opposition to new pipelines, the failure of the Hydrogen Village trial and uninformed media commentary around electric vehicles generating so much brake dust that they are worse than diesels, for example!’
Daisy Powell-Chandler, Head of Energy & Environment, Public First, discussed some of the implications of recent energy policy moves in practice for consumers. ‘A short while ago, we asked people all over the country to imagine that a developer was about to build a wind farm near their home in some unused green space. We took the total opposition to that proposal and asked what would happen if we gave them £75 a year off their bills. Suddenly a bunch of them started to think maybe they quite like that. And when we doubled the amount, another cohort changed their view. Gradually we’re breaking down the opposition. We’re not talking about citizen engagement here. This is hard consumer money; this is a transaction.’