Only the market for energy saving?

Government's newest department, of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), is hosting a consultation entitled Heat and Energy Saving Strategy (HESS), which promises to be a step change in energy saving.

HESS sets out the strategy to cut carbon emissions by 30% from existing UK buildings by 2020, towards the ultimate target that emissions from buildings will be approaching zero by 2050. This aspiration has of course been widely welcomed. Friends of the Earth (FoE) called it "an ambitious target", and WWF-UK, "critical to the UK achieving our carbon budget targets". Yet both questioned the means: FoE stated it could "kick-start the economy" – as part of the 'Green New Deal' strategy, and WWF-UK stated "we need to see funding for this strategy as a matter of urgency".

As Green New Deal advocate Alan Simpson MP states, "The process of turning our homes, communities and cities into their own localised power stations requires huge amounts of work and skill. The employment prospects are vast. Jobs and investment cannot be banked offshore or relocated".

The consultation document states, "if the level of ambition set out above is achieved, then there will be approximately 34,000 jobs". Bear in mind, unemployment rose by 165,000 last month alone.

The thing is there is no funding – not in the consultation document anyway. Instead we have "new finance models", "a new voluntary code of practice with the building trade", "carbon pricing mechanisms", and the intention to "stimulate greater competition by encouraging new companies to enter the market to provide energy services".

Whenever we need delivery, New Labour looks to the market . . . and fails. Despite the wreckage of market failure hanging like an albatross around New Labour's lame duck government (London Underground PPP, the banks, PFI) it has lost none of its faith. From housing and postal services to welfare and the environment, if we need it New Labour will give it to the market to exploit.

Unlike some of its European neighbours, the Government will not invest, nor allow local authorities to invest, in decentralised energy systems. In parts of Europe 80% of their energy system is community-owned. Instead, the UK government will be "convening a Heat Markets Forum to ensure an appropriate market framework is in place."

It is this woeful poverty of ambition and market-based approach that requires a fundamental rethink, based on the more ambitious experiences of our European neighbours and a shift to community-controlled provision. The deadline for the consultation is 8th May 2009, and the consultation documents can be downloaded from the DECC website.