Utility Week

16 | MARCH 2023 | UTILITY WEEK Regulation Analysis Exorcising the ghosts of BEIS The formation of a new energy security and net zero department has been welcomed by utilities, but will it actually prove more eff ective than its sprawling and ineff ective predecessor? S ince the Department for Energy Secu- rity & Net Zero was unveiled in Febru- ary, the main point of contention on social media has been about how to shorten its title. The sheer volume of consonants in the straight acronym DESNZ sounds like a small town in Poland, making DESNEZ a likelier option. However, outside of industry Twitter cir- cles, the big question about the new depart- ment is whether it will be a more e ective vehicle than the sprawling Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) it replaces. Instead of being subsumed into a larger department, energy and net zero will once again have a dedicated ministry, essentially the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), which existed from 2008 toŠ2016. Who's in and who's out? One of the big downsides of any Whitehall reorganisation is the time and energy inevi- tably diverted into getting the new organisa- tion up and running. Adam Bell, former head of energy strat- egy at BEIS, says: "Having been through the machinery of government change, they soak up an awful lot of departmental energy and resources. You have to change the phone systems, you have to restructure and – gure out who's getting which job, especially at the senior levels." That said, many key personnel in the new look department will be the same. Grant Shapps has moved across from being secretary of state for BEIS to taking the same role at the new department. Two key lieutenants at BEIS will transfer with him, minister of state Graham Stuart and under- secretary of state Lord Callanan. In addition, all the key energy and net zero directors-general in the new depart- ments will be moving across, as well as BEIS second permanent secretary Clive Maxwell. Josh Buckland, who worked as a govern- ment special adviser in both Decc and BEIS as well as in No 10 Downing Street during Theresa May's premiership, says: "The same secretary of state will be leading it and the same oŸ cials will be involved, which should therefore create less disruption. People know where they stand and responsibilities are clearly allocated. "It's great that you've got a secretary of state who's already quite experienced with advisory teams; that will hopefully also really help in terms of delivery." The one big new appointment, Jeremy Pocklington as permanent secretary, gets a thumbs-up across the board. He was director general, energy and secu- rity, at BEIS for nearly two years until 2018, prior to which he was director general of the markets and infrastructure group at Decc. Noting Pocklington's "long experience" in the energy sector, Buckland says: "He understands the industry well and has the kind of deep experience in some of the nitty gritty that will be really bene– cial." Ex-Tory MP Laura Sandys, who has con- ducted reviews for BEIS, hails Pocklington as "super intelligent" and believes that re- establishing a dedicated energy department is a "very good" move. 'Everything was getting out of hand' Both the standalone and merged set-ups had advantages, says Buckland: "The big bene– t of a single department is you have a wider set of ministers and the single secretaries of state focused on their agenda on an ongoing basis. That gives them hopefully a bit more time and space, given the complexity of the issues, to really focus on delivery." In the new structure Shapps' attention will be more tightly focused than it ever could be in the sprawling BEIS empire. Ed Matthew, campaigns director at cli- mate change think-tank E3G, says: "BEIS was such a massive department that trying to get the secretary of state and the ministers to really focus on the net zero and energy agenda was harder. "This is no criticism of the minister, it's just the reality of managing a Herculean department, which is so broad and dealing with so many di erent policies." Buckland agrees: "Grant has been dealing with all the strikes and all the labour issues. That obviously distracts from the energy and climate agenda." "They'll be able to get more coordination in a smaller department; everything was get- ting very out of hand," says Sandys. Bell says: "It enables the new depart- ment to be much more mission focused than the previous one. BEIS was big and clunky: it was doing an awful lot of things at once. With the best will in the world, it's very dif- – cult for any individual secretary of state to be across all the things that BEIS was doing, which meant that you've got fewer decisions." Chris Rum– tt, chief executive of public a airs – rm Field Consulting, quips that the recent focus on energy issues means BEIS had become "an energy department with some business policy on the side". "Nothing else was getting a look in, which was causing all sorts of problems. There's lots of other business issues, contro- versial legislation like the EU revocation bill, that wasn't getting proper attention." However, across its seven-year existence, BEIS has not passed a single "signi– cant" piece of energy legislation, says Bell: "Brexit was a factor but having a department for energy that can actually pass an Energy Bill will be great for the sector." Just having two more dedicated minis- ters means a greater likelihood that deci- sions, especially the lower pro– le ones, will be taken more rapidly, he says: "Just getting more decisions done more quickly is a de– - nite plus side of the structure." This focus will be especially important now when energy policy is moving from the grand ambitions sketched out by May's suc- cessor, Boris Johnson, to delivery, says Buck- land, who is now a director at public a airs company Flint Global.

• Cover