CIBSE welcomes the strong message on energy and climate change action the energy white paper presents but believes it does not deliver for renewables, missing an important opportunity to confirm the role that renewables should play in working towards a sustainable future.
The inclusion of nuclear power in this review, and its promotion, contrary to the judicial review ordered by the high court, has, as CIBSE and others predicted it would, taken the emphasis away from energy efficiency and renewable options and concentrated on an option that is still very uncertain.
Energy efficiency and renewables need political commitment to encourage take up and this white paper has not delivered.
Efforts on metering are to await another consultation and product standards are still to go through the market transformation programme which the EU has already decided to expand. A mandatory cap and trade scheme, the Carbon Reduction Commitment, remains on the ‘consultation roundabout’ alongside these measures.
This last scheme, outlined in the ‘energy performance commitment consultation’, represents, CIBSE believes, a double effort on large non-energy intensive business and public sector building users. It will not replace energy performance certificates and will create a double system, one where public authorities are doubly penalised. CIBSE stressed during the consultation the importance of maintaining carbon reduction in buildings with building professionals and not accountant and financial managers. CIBSE proposed rolling out certificates to a wider range of organisations earlier than the EU timetable.
CIBSE is pleased however to see government recognise that enforcement of the building regulations is a key element to their successful use as tools for carbon reduction in buildings. The continued support of heat and power schemes is also to be applauded and one CIBSE, through its own Carbon Trust funded programme of promoting CHP to industry, knows has a growing interest across different sectors.
CIBSE, through initiatives like its Low Carbon Consultants scheme has the skilled membership to enable government to move beyond rhetoric towards real action on saving emissions in buildings, but we will have to wait and see what the action further consultations, on top of the already extended process of delivering the white paper, will bring.
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