Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JULY 2021 | 13 Policy & Regulation Talking Points… Treasury support for net zero in the spotlight Comment David Blackman Policy correspondent B oris Johnson had his moment in the sun, literally and metaphorically, hosting world leaders at the G7 sum- mit last month. His next showpiece event, ngers crossed, will be for the COP26 climate change summit, due to be held in Glasgow this November. There is clearly a lot of diplomatic spade- work on climate change for the government to do during the next ve months, but min- isters must get their domestic house in order on the issue too. Here the to-do list is growing. Last December's Energy White Paper was littered with deadlines for the documents that would begin to turn its aspirations into concrete policies. The sharp-eyed reader will not be sur- prised to learn that many of these have yet to be hit. By now we should have known the government's thinking on a host of issues, including a hydrogen strategy and how to turn into practical policy the ambitious target in last year's 10-point green industrial revolution plan to rollout 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. The white paper also promised that by the end of March we would have a rmer grasp on the shape of the post-price cap retail market, including the framework for introducing automatic switching (rumoured to be coming next month). Number 10's focus on ensuring a success- ful G7 has been touted as a reason why the government has yet to publish its heat and buildings strategy. Now the industry's Whitehall watchers are becoming jittery about whether the heat strategy, the lynchpin of e' orts to decarbon- ise the nation's homes, will even appear by the time parliament disperses for its sum- mer recess on 22 July. Another crucial piece of the decarbonis- ing homes jigsaw will be the Treasury's net zero review, which is meant to " esh out how the costs of meeting the government's ambi- tious 2050 emissions target will be met. The interim review, published just before Christmas, was widely felt to be a damp squib that was long on analysis without o' ering clues about how or who the costs of net zero will be paid. Utility Week has been told by sources close to government that the dra— of the review's nal report is still light on policy. Because of this, Johnson has muttered privately that publication of the document should be delayed further rather than go out in its current form. But while Number 10 can alter the foreword and conclusions of such a document, the Treasury controls its substance. "Government has shown signifi cant commitment and the prime minister's 10-point plan gives a sense of the scale of change needed but the pace needs to step up if we are to realise this ambition." Michael Lewis, chief executive, Eon "There aren't many good things we are going to take away from this pandemic. But I want us to bottle the spirit of cooperation that supported our industries through the pandemic and use that collaboration to drive our progress to net zero." Jonathan Brearley, chief executive, Ofgem "This scheme was not just a pathetic failure; it has put the cause of retrofi tting homes back substantially. Companies that wanted to do the work were burned yet again and will perhaps be reluctant to undertake further work. Disappointed householders were grievously misled on the energy uprating process, and precious time has been lost." Alan Whitehead, Labour shadow energy minister, on the Green Homes Grant Quote, unquote Boris Johnson helps instal a solar panel at the UK's fi rst utility-scale en- ergy park – Scottish Power's Carland Cross in Cornwall. CEO Keith Ander- son, left, with three other members of the Scottish Power team

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