Reducing energy use in the public sector

It’s time to get our house in order and ramp up the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme says Polly Billington, Chief Executive of UK100

Britain is in the grip of an energy price crisis prompted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its knock-on effect on global gas supplies.
    
This situation is not of our making. What is, however, is the depth of its effects on our energy bills.
    
The price controls proposed by the new Prime Minister are a welcome reprieve for bill-payers, but even with them, energy prices have doubled for households in less than a year and for commercial and public sector customers even more so.
    
It’s a vital intervention, but it’s also a short-term fix.
    
Energy supply measures alone won’t reduce bills permanently.
    
It’s not sexy. And it doesn’t sell newspapers. But what we needed alongside short-term relief was a long-term plan that grasps the energy efficiency nettle.
    
And that’s what’s on the agenda at UK100’s upcoming “Tackling the Energy Price Crisis” summit on 17 November, which will focus on the role of local and regional leaders in delivering energy efficiency upgrades in partnership with the new government.
    
The summit will look at the need for a social housing energy efficiency drive. But while decarbonising domestic buildings is key, they’re only part of the problem.
    
From town halls to terraced homes, the UK building stock is one of the most inefficient in Europe.
    
Almost half of the energy consumed in Britain is to provide heat to our beloved but damp, draughty and leaky buildings.
    
If radiators in libraries, town halls, and leisure centres kicked out five-pound notes instead of warm air, we’d watch wads of cash escaping through their roofs, windows, doors and walls every winter.
    
It’s worth stating the obvious here: the cheapest energy is the energy we don’t use. Across Britain, we’re paying through the nose for energy we don’t need to use.
    
And so is the climate. As well as the cheapest, the energy we don’t use is also the cleanest.
    
At least 19 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions come from heating the places we live, work and play. And the built environment is directly responsible for a quarter of Britain’s carbon emissions.
    
We have to get our house in order to help tackle the energy price crisis while keeping the UK on track for Net Zero.
    
And we were trying. That is until support for a thriving energy efficiency industry working to improve and upgrade buildings across the country was pilloried as “green crap” and axed in 2013.

Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme
Fast forward to 2021, and under Boris Johnson, a champion of Net Zero, the government realised the error of its way, albeit indirectly, with the Heat and Buildings Strategy.
    
The strategy recognises that reducing energy bills and meeting Britain’s climate goals “will require almost all buildings to fully decarbonise.”
    
As a network of climate-ambitious local authorities, UK100 welcomed the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) as a means to support that end.
    
This month, the PSDS opened for its latest round of funding application. It aims to support local authorities and others to reduce public sector building emissions by 75 per cent by 2037.
    
And it recognises local leaders are most trusted and best placed to deliver effective Net Zero action, with local authorities receiving 27 per cent (£652m) of the funding in the first phase.
    
The funding has supported innovative projects for UK100 members like Newcastle-upon-Tyne City Council, Sunderland City Council, Greater Manchester Combined Authority and many others.
    
In Newcastle, almost £30 million went to six projects to install heat decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures across 16 schools, two leisure centres, two libraries, three Grade II listed cultural and creative venues, four depots and office complexes and two industrial sites.
    
The measures deployed include solar panels, heat pumps, new LED lighting, battery storage, low carbon heating, energy-efficient windows, and better wall, roof, and pipework insulation.
    
The scheme also allowed the council to connect several buildings, including office and event spaces, to a heating network powered by their District Energy Centre.
    
In total, the projects will remove up to 4,050 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions each year – equivalent to taking 2,828 cars off the road.
    
Meanwhile, in The City of London, over £9 million of PSDS funding has been invested in energy efficiency measures at four sites: the Guildhall, Barbican Arts Centre, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and London Metropolitan Archives.
    
The upgrades to the historic venues included electrical infrastructure improvements, LED lighting, heating insulation, ventilation fans and motors to make them more efficient, air conditioning systems, and improving energy metering and building controls.
    
Over in Greater Manchester, almost £80 million supported a project to decarbonise 15 bodies of the Greater Manchester public estate, including Transport for Greater Manchester, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, Greater Manchester Police, the Royal Northern College of Music, and various assets such as leisure centres, schools and offices.
    
Thanks to the funding, 36 schools are in the process of being upgraded, 30 primary schools and six high schools. More than 20 leisure centres will also be upgraded.
    
These upgrades include the installation of air source heat pumps, solar panels, insulation, LED lighting, and energy monitoring and control systems. The project is a part of Greater Manchester’s vision for the region to become carbon neutral by 2038.  
    
The works are creating and safeguarding around 2,000 jobs throughout the city region and supporting Greater Manchester’s goal to achieve Net Zero by 2038.

Savings
The Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme is already helping local authorities save significant sums of money and accelerate action on local Net Zero.
    
And, with the new round of funding, it’s great to see that more public buildings will be insulated and supported to be more energy efficient.
    
Amidst the energy price crisis, this is essential.
    
But the scheme is not without its flaws. The funding pot is distributed not by need but by competitive bidding, with a short window for applications and project delivery.
    
I would agree with Michael Gove that there are too many competitive funding pots for councils.
    
“Some local authorities simply don’t have the capacity to jump through all of those hoops,” the former Secretary of State for Levelling Up said earlier this year.
    
But it’s not just that. The majority of local authority recipients of the PSDS are the larger and more urban authorities and those with climate-ambitious plans already in place.
    
As the National Infrastructure Commission recommends, we should move away from competitive funding — especially for infrastructure and Net Zero projects.
    
Net Zero is not a competition but a shared goal.
    
And while local authorities have a proven track record of delivering the bang for taxpayers’ buck, the PSDS needs to be expanded — the just over £1 billion funding available doesn’t address the scale of the challenge we face.
    
By comparison, the government has literally burned through £10 billion of unusable personal protective equipment bought in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
    
The pandemic was an unprecedented crisis, and the government reacted accordingly.
    
We need a commitment to the energy price and ongoing climate crises that similarly recognises the magnitude of the responses required.
    
Instead, the latest PSDS announcement followed an absurd decision by the government to scrap a separate £1 billion domestic energy efficiency plan.
    
Ultimately, any money for insulation and low carbon heating is welcome, but far more is needed. And it needs to be targeted to the households and local authorities most in need.

Green Homes Grant
Although widely derided at a national level, the Local Authority Delivery arm of the Green Homes Grant demonstrated that local authorities can lead the kind of energy efficiency revolution we need.
    
Local leaders delivered Green Home Grant projects that saved low-income households over £1.2 million a year on their bills.
    
The success of PSDS so far only bolsters their credentials. And they want to go further, faster. They just need more support.