Utility Week

14 | MAY 2023 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Analysis Is the latest energy plan fit for purpose? The publication of last month's Energy Security Plan added a lot more detail to the government's oft-touted ambitions on energy security and efficiency. So who are the winners and losers? W hen Boris Johnson's British Energy Security Strategy was published, almost exactly a year ago, the 38-page document was criticised as being long on targets but short on detail, reflect- ing the character of the then prime minister's administration. The diligent nature of Johnson's successor but one was on show in Rishi Sunak's much more detailed Energy Security Plan, which was published last month. Together with the associated documents, which spewed out from the freshly minted Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), it runs to around 2,800 pages. "It's not just big bets on nuclear and off- shore wind, which is what they announced last year," says Alex Gray, head of public affairs at Energy UK, who says he hopes the weighty nature of last month's announce- ments is a sign that the government has "really woken up" to the scale of the energy security challenge that the UK faces. And while the UK escaped widely antici- pated blackouts during the past winter, it is far from out of the woods yet, he says: "The wholesale prices are still pretty unsta- ble so we're not quite sure what is going to happen." Much will depend on whether the politi- cal will exists to prioritise action on energy security, says Emma Woodward, project lead advisory at consultancy Aurora. "It will very much depend on whether people going into it [next winter] with the same concern," she says And the government has a lot else on its plate, like the thousands of documents of EU legislation that it has pledged to axe by the end of this year, says Gray: "The government just needs to get cracking as soon as possible on it. Just looking politically, they're running out of time. "The key test now which they'll be meas- ured on in terms of improving energy secu- rity is getting some of this stuff urgently passed." So how does the plan, officially entitled "Powering Up Britain", measure up to the scale of the challenge facing the UK on the areas that matter to utilities? Energy efficiency Oœen the bridesmaid, never the bride; so oœen, that is the fate of energy efficiency. There have been steps forward over the past year, such as a target to cut UK energy consumption by 15% by the end of this decade and the establish- ment of a new energy efficiency taskforce. However, last month's announcement contained slim pickings for energy efficiency. The transformation of ECO+ (Energy Company Obligation) into the admittedly snappier Great British Insulation Scheme is dismissed as simply "a rebranding exercise" by Juliet Phillips, senior policy adviser at thinktank E3G. Neither is the rebranding accompanied with any fresh cash, says Adam Bell, direc- tor of policy at consultancy Stonehaven, who is nevertheless pleased that the government is finally taking forward the long-stalled pro- cess of improving the energy performance of private rented sector homes. But given that this commitment merely extends to outlining an intent to respond to a consultation, which concluded more than two years ago, Phillips sees this as a "kicking the can down the road" exercise by a government still "hostage to the vested interest of landlords". And even aœer March's

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