Utility Week - authoritative, impartial and essential reading for senior people within utilities, regulators and government
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/1309237
UTILITY WEEK | DECEMBER 2020 | 17 Policy & Regulation Talking Points… "If the CMA wants to restore consumer trust in green products, taking a closer look at the claims of energy companies should be top of the list." Juliet Davenport, chief executive of Good Energy, responds to the launch of a Competition and Markets Authority investigation into eco-friendly claims about products. "In recent years, and particularly during this crisis, our country has fallen behind in the drive to be a cleaner, greener economy. We've seen far more rhetoric than action – and that has cost our country jobs." Ed Miliband, Labour's shadow secretary of state for business and environment, launching the party's economic stimulus plan. "[We] invite the CMA to make it clear that the findings in this price determination concern the CMA's particular statutory role in relation to water and focus only on the water industry, and should not be read across to other regulatory contexts." Akshay Kaul, director of networks, Ofgem, in his submission to the CMA on its initial PR19 redeterminations. Quote, unquote The news in numbers: 11GW The new target for offshore wind by 2030 set by the Scottish government, up from 8GW. 2,941 The number of times water companies issued notifications about discharging combined sewer overflows between 1 October 2019 and 30 September this year, according to Surfers Against Sewage. 48 The megatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions now estimated for the third carbon budget, which covers the period 2018 to 2023, 2 per cent higher than when the 2018 projections were published. 40,000 Number of prepayment meter customers overcharged by Utilita, which agreed to pay £500,000 aer an Ofgem investigation COP could unlock special relationship with Biden's US Comment David Blackman Policy correspondent W hen Joe Biden became the fih youngest US senator in 1972, climate change was a cause for concern. But in those days, the worries of many centred on whether the world was about to enter a new Ice Age. As he now prepares for the White House as the oldest president in US history, a lot has changed. Now the concern is focused on global warming. Reflecting this shi, the former vice-president has made tackling climate change one of the top priorities for his new administration. This has consequences for the UK-US relationship. The UK's importance to the US as a diplomatic ally is widely seen to be diminished in the wake of Brexit. Throughout much of the post-war period, Britain has acted as a bridge between the US and the rest of Europe, a role that leaving the EU inevitably undermines. Add to that the perception among top Democrats that Johnson is a Donald Trump fel- low traveller and it is easy to see that the UK prime minister has got a lot to do in order to earn Brownie points in the Biden White House. The UK will remain an important partner for the US on security and intelligence mat- ters. However, in one other key area for Biden, the UK will have clout: its role as host of next year's UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow. This will give the UK govern- ment a pivotal role in an area where Biden will be under pres- sure to deliver, particularly from the younger and green-minded voters. Tom Tugendhat, chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs select committee, told the Energy and Climate Information Unit's pre-US election seminar that he expects the government to use the COP as a way of get- ting a hearing in the new White House that will be "otherwise very difficult". A successful COP26 will mat- ter to Biden, whose ability to get things done will be limited if the Republicans maintain their hold on the US Senate. However, the US president can do some things without get- ting the Senate's say so. These include re-entering the UN Paris agreement, which his predeces- sor took the US out of through an executive order. Biden has said he will do this as soon as he is inaugurated next year. A successful COP will help Biden get around the Senate's obstruction of any Green New Deal legislation he tries to implement, by providing the private sector with a strong sig- nal that decarbonisation is his administration's policy direction of travel. This matters for the UK. Not so long ago, Johnson famously dismissed wind power. Now, the future of the UK's prized special relationship with the USA could depend on it.