Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JULY 2021 | 17 Policy & Regulation in association with 'We're scared of telling regulators what to do' Energy rms will struggle to build trust with consumers when theya re constantly talked down by their own regulator, accord- ing to one senior gure at a retailer. The debate touched on what was per- ceived as a mismatch between the message coming from government on net zero and the approach taken by Ofgem. The retailer said: "Look at the projec- tions from Project Discovery back in 2010 when Ofgem was predicting duel fuel bills up by 150 per cent worst case and 16 per cent best case by 2020. In actual fact, by 2018, it had dropped by £200. "We cannot have our regulator torpe- doing its own industry and then expect to build trust on the journey we need to go through with the population." Another CEO said: "We seem to be scared as a country of telling regulators what to do. We've got this complete politi- cal and mental block about interfering in independent regulation. "That's a complete nonsense. I don't think there's anything wrong with the gov- ernment stating very clearly to the regula- tors – by 2030 here's how many charge points we want across the UK. By 2030, here's what we need done to the distribu- tion system to allow that to happen. It's then up to the regulator to work indepen- dently within that framework." A policy expert added: "Clearly sectoral regulators and their interplay with compe- tition policy is important. Sometimes that interplay between government and regula- tion is underpinned by a somewhat short- term desire to align paybacks with political timeframes. We should properly expose that. I welcome that debate." Utilities 'should be the vanguard' of netzero The UK's net zero business champion has urged utilities to see the UN's climate confer- ence in Glasgow this November as a "mar- shalling moment in time". Andrew Gri˜ th MP, the former Sky execu- tive who entered the Commons in the 2019 intake, was appointed to the newly created role in November. He told the roundtable that the private sector, and utilities in par- ticular, would ultimately provide many of the answers to climate change conundrums and said the government recognised this. He said: "Utilities should be a vanguard of what enterprise and capital can deliver. Many of you are already leading this journey and I want you to know that is recognised. "Our shared endeavour is how do we har- ness the ferocious problem-solving power of business for all of the wider challenges we have in society, including the climate crisis?" He said this was particularly true of engagement with consumers on chang- ing behaviour – a process described during the debate as "re-plumbing every aspect of human behaviour". He pointed to utilities' close relationships with consumers across the country as a key enabler of behaviour change. Reacting to the points raised in the dis- cussion, Gri˜ th promised to feed back to government, adding: "Pace is what I have heard and that seems to be a common goal." He added: "COP26 is a marshalling moment in time. It gives us a sense of momentum to engage in these discussions with a time pressure, which I think is really useful. We can all of us use that to keep our feet to the re." "Utilities should be a vanguard of what enterprise and capital can deliver. Many of you are already leading this journey and I want you to know that is recognised." Andrew Gri th MP, net zero business champion Pro-business message hasn't ltered down to civil servants Government is listening to the utilities sector but civil servants oŸ en remain a blocker to progress, participants insisted. Opening the debate, Gri˜ th stressed there was a real willingness to listen from this government, highlighting the level of access to secretaries of state. The industry representatives at the round- table agreed that at a senior level, govern- ment is open to dialogue. However, one added: "I don't know if the message that the government is willing to lis- ten has necessarily ltered down to the civil servants. We haven't been given the same open-door policy from the civil servants as we have from ministers. "What we get are requests to plot eve- rything out on the page. We just don't have time for that and it's not always clear how this all joins up." They added: "It's great that access to gov- ernment has improved but that really needs to turn into action pretty soon. My worry is that we're waiting on a whole load of strat- egy documents and I really hope they con- tain a proper roadmap as opposed to more consultations." A suggestion from one policy expert to ease the logjam of policy was to speed up the consultation process. They suggested a blan- ket 30-day period for all consultations. In response, one participant said: "In theory that would help to drive things for- ward but it very much depends on the period before the consultation. "If we've been kept in the loop about what is developing and how it all ts together then four weeks is ne. At the moment it feels like a lot of work is done in the ivory towers and then it's presented to the people. Too oŸ en there are complete surprises in there. That doesn't seem to work for anyone."

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