Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | 12TH - 18TH OCTOBER 2018 | 13 Policy & Regulation This week Penrose calls for 'bold' review of regulators MP behind energy price cap says regulation must be 'fixed' or Labour will 'drag us back to the 1970s' The upcoming review of utility regulation must be "brave and bold", according to John Pen- rose, the Tory MP who led the charge on the energy price cap. The Treasury has announced that the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) will examine the regulation of the UK's energy, telecoms and water industries. Penrose told Utility Week at the Conservative party conference that he welcomed the review but said it had to be "radical" to meet head-on Labour's push to bring utilities back into public ownership. He said: "This is one of the things that needs to be fixed urgently, otherwise the le will drag us back to the 1970s and you cannot allow them to be the only game in town." He added: "The question is whether the review will be big and brave enough." The NIC said the regulatory review will seek to strike a balance between maintaining investment and innovation in the utilities while ensuring services are affordable. Sir John Armitt, NIC chairman, said: "The regulators are vital in ensuring we as consumers are treated fairly. But if the UK is to be a world leader in the latest technolo- gies, we need a system of regulation that allows compa- nies to be innovative without being penalised for it." Penrose heavily criticised Ofgem in the run-up to the price cap legislation, and said at a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference that the existing system of industry-specific regulation should be scrapped and that industry regulators should be replaced with a single watchdog to oversee all utility network functions. DB ENERGY SMETS1 deadline extended – again The government has confirmed another extension to the dead- line for the installation of first generation energy smart meters (SMETS1). In January the Department for Business, Energy and Indus- trial Strategy (BEIS) pushed the 13 July end date back to 5 Octo- ber 2018. It will now extend this by a further two months to 5 December 2018. BEIS announced the addi- tional extension aer a consulta- tion into the proposal, which was launched in early July. A separate end date for prepayment meter installations of 15 March 2019 has also been announced. This deadline will be introduced through regula- tion in the Smart Energy Code, which sets out the rights and obligations of industry parties for smart metering. WATER Redwood urges more water competition The government has been urged by one of the architects of the Tories' privatisation drive of the 1980s to open up the water com- panies to greater competition. Speaking at a fringe meet- ing at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, John Redwood MP backed opening up the regional monopolies for household customers that hold sway in the water sector. The Wokingham MP, who helped develop the privatisation blueprint when working as head of Margaret Thatcher's policy unit in the mid-1980s, said: "It's high time we put a full competi- tive regime into water." He said that breaking up the regional monopolies would encourage suppliers to offer a range of different quality water depending on whether they needed it for drinking or not. ENERGY 'Exploit' CCS and biomass technology Combining carbon capture tech- nology with biomass to deliver negative emission generation may give the UK much-needed "elbow room" in its efforts to cut emissions, Claire Perry has said. The energy minister told a Conservative party conference fringe meeting on carbon cap- ture and storage in Birmingham that the UK has no option but to exploit the technology as part of its wider decarbonisation efforts. Drax Power is conducting a pilot project to capture carbon from biomass burnt at one of its power stations in Yorkshire. Perry said the two technolo- gies would give the UK "elbow room for slower progress in other sectors". Penrose: 'radical' action needed on regulation Political Agenda David Blackman "The world has only a dozen years to get back on track" Clive Lewis quipped tongue in cheek at the Labour party's recent conference that as a sci-fi fan "planet-destroying catastro- phes" float his boat. The Labour frontbench spokesman, who has been tasked by shadow chancellor John McDonnell with running a green audit over the opposi- tion's spending plans, will have much to get his teeth into with the findings of the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. tive to decarbonise the economy. Labour has planted its flag firmly in the renewable energy camp. And even the Conserva- tive climate change sceptic wing was quiet while pressure started to build for a relaxation of the government's hardline stance against new onshore wind and solar deployment. The government shows few signs of changing its direction on this issue, but the prospect of imminent apocalypse might just concentrate minds. The report's most sobering conclusion is that the world is off track to keep temperature rises from increasing to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels by 2050. This is important because above this level the more cata- strophic impacts of global warm- ing, like a near disappearance of Earth's coral reefs, kick in. The world has only a dozen years to get things back on track – less than three general elec- tions – which could be useful for concentrating the minds of Westminster politicians. Judging by the just-concluded party conference season, politi- cal consensus appears to be solidifying around the impera-

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