Utility Week

18 | MARCH 2021 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Talking Points… There's a good chance the recommendations of the Penrose report will be acted upon. Comment David Blackman Policy correspondent T he Penrose-Harding house- hold must be a pretty high-octane environment. For much of the past year, Baroness Harding has been overseeing the establishment and faltering progress of the UK's coronavirus track and trace regime. Meanwhile, since September, her husband John Penrose MP has been keeping busy on a new blueprint for UK regulation. The fruit of the West Country Conservative MP's labours emerged in mid-February. Whitehall's bookshelves groan under the physical and virtual weight of long- forgotten reviews. For the likes of Yes Minister's Sir Humphrey Appleby and his political mas- ters, commissioning a review was a handy way of putting o‚ taking action. By the time the review has been completed, the issue that prompted it may have blown over or the minister who com- missioned it moved on. An example was professor Dieter Helm's review of energy policy. Many of the document's 67 rec- ommendations appear to have been largely forgotten by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy department, which commissioned it in 2017. However, Penrose will be more diŒ cult to ignore. In con- trast to the academic prof Helm, the Somerset MP has not been afraid to rock the boat since he was elected to parliament in 2005. He led the campaign from the Conservative backbenches against what he branded rip-o‚ standard variable tari‚ s, which presaged the energy price cap. Like Helm, Penrose had a strong idea about the answer to the question he was set before his review commenced. At a fringe meeting at the Conserva- tive party conference in late 2018, he called for the scrap- ping of existing sector-speci" c regulators like Ofgem and Ofwat. These economic regula- tors should be replaced with a single watchdog to oversee all utility network functions, he told delegates. This initial vision has been watered down in his report, which proposes that individual regulators shouldn't be abol- ished. Over time, though, as greater competition is injected into the markets they police, the report says regulators should surrender functions to the Competition and Markets Authority until their remit is con" ned to the oversight of sur- viving monopolies and "deeply embedded long-term consumer protection problems". Penrose's vision is less radical than those who prize the UK's existing framework of independent utilities regulation may have feared. However, given his track record and close links to the heart of government, it would be rash to bet against it being implemented. "We've seen great communication on promoting the vaccine: some of that in the future on decarbonisation would be a good lesson from the pandemic." Daren Jones, chair of the BEIS select committee "You have four great offi ces of state: let's have fi ve, invest energy and climate change with the authority of a great offi ce of state, give it to a really senior Cabinet minister and then you will see it delivered eff ectively." Amber Rudd, former Secretary Of State For Energy And Climate Change "It is vital that the cost of achieving net zero is not met by burdening our customers, but that we engage with them throughout the process to ensure no-one is left behind by the transition to a smarter energy system." Phil Swi , CEO, Western Power Distribution, launching the company's ED2 busines plan. Quote, unquote The news in numbers: The government's beleaguered Green Homes Grant scheme has fea- tured prominently in Utility Week's pages over the past few months. Most controversial was the admission by the new energy minister Anne- Marie Trevelyan that any under- spend in this year's tranche of the pro- gramme to March 2021 will not be rolled over to the next ˆ nancial year. Below are some key numbers: 600,000 Target of vouchers to be issued under the GHG. 17,618 Vouchers actually issued by the end of January – four months into the scheme. 1,300 GHG installers now registered with TrustMark and eligible to take part in the scheme. £2bn Total committed to the scheme up to March 2021.

• Cover