TheOnzoNews

Onzo has just been elected as a corporate member of the Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies, the pre-eminent cross party energy group, which forms a bridge between MPs, Peers and members of the European parliament. and the energy sector.  It currently has around 200 parliamentary members and its existing corporate members include Scottish and Southern Energy, Centrica, EDF, National Grid and British Energy.  Membership is usually limited to major companies such as these and the invitation to Onzo to join is a recognition both of the importance of home energy management systems and our role in their design and of the part we are playing in contributing to public policy debates on energy issues.  We are the only business active in our sphere to be a member.

The Group meets monthly in the Palace of Westminster.  Recent speakers have included: the Chancellor of the Exchequer; Macolm Wicks, until recently Energy Minister; Charles Hendry, the Conservative energy spokesman; Alistair Buchanan, Chief Executive of the energy regulator, Ofgem; and Ian Marchant of SSE (who was talking about smart meters).  

Membership of the PGES will give Onzo an excellent opportunity to network at the highest level and to continue to operate in the Premier League of the energy world.

Nick Lonie, Onzo’s Business Development Director for ANZ is speaking on Thursday morning at the Metering, Billing/ CRM Conference in Melbourne, Australia. The event is the largest utility event on Metering, Billing and CRM of electricity, water and gas in Australia and runs from 18 - 20 November. He will be delivering a presentation on Building More Effective Demand Strategies through Better User Testing.

If you don't happen to be in Australia at this time, but you are in the States; Joel Hagan, CEO, is visiting the Greentech Innovations event in New York from 17 -18 November.

If you would like to arrange a meeting with any of the team during the conferences you can reach them on their email address (listed on the People page. Alternatively, please feel free to call the London office and we will be happy to set something up.

On Thursday 12th November the Today programme on Radio 4 had a lengthy piece on the looming gap between energy supply and demand. It reported the findings of a questionnaire it sent to 31 “experts”, who almost all expressed frustration about the government’s “dithering” although they mostly discounted suggestions that the lights were about to go out in the immediate future. They deplored our dependence on the international price of gas, and “called for new ways of doing things”.

The results of this survey can be found here.

The following is Onzo’s comment on the experts’ conclusions:

We agree there is no need to be alarmist; it is unlikely the lights are going to go out in the near future and unhelpful to suggest they will. Nevertheless, constraints on supply, and rising demand as the population increases, clearly pose a serious problem and there are no grounds for complacency. There is undoubtedly a need for new ways of thinking, and for far greater diversity of supply including renewables, nuclear and carbon capture. 80 per cent of our gas will come from foreign sources by 2020 and even without concern for the environment we cannot go on as we are.

We must not, however, lose sight of concern for the environment. Tackling climate change is just as much an economic as a social imperative and we agree with the vast majority of the respondents who stated that the government “must not relax its commitment to carbon cuts in order to maximize the supply of cheap energy”.

Of course there is need for massive investment in energy infrastructure, which has been neglected by successive governments for more than a quarter of a century as we basked in the false sense of security engendered by North Sea oil and gas. As almost all the respondents agreed, revenue from the auction of carbon gas emission trading permits should be used for this specific purpose, rather than being swallowed up by the Treasury, even if it is then used for the purposes of general economic stimulation. Transmission systems, gas storage, carbon capture; all need a large-scale injection of capital.

As much emphasis must be placed on reducing demand as on increasing supply. This becomes more imperative if calls for the “de-carbonisation” of the economy, as advocated by Lord Turner of Ecchinswell and the government’s climate change committee, are heeded. The electrification of many processes, both in the home and in industry, that have up to now run on gas will inevitably increase power generation.

Energy efficiency is vital to demand reduction. This is true of industry and commerce but the scope here is somewhat limited and it is perhaps in the home that the greatest scope for saving can be found. Domestic energy use continues to grow and more than 30 per cent of carbon gas emissions come from the home.

The importance of domestic energy saving has been recognized by the government, possibly belatedly, and the energy suppliers have agreed to contribute £910m over three years to this purpose, largely through promoting home insulation. This is only a drop the ocean, however. It will probably only improve the insulation of somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 homes in each of the three years - there are around 22.5 million homes in the UK.

A more radical way of financing home energy efficiency improvement is needed; one that gets round the reluctance of home owners to spend money on measures which, they perceive, will not return their investment for years. Onzo advocates getting round this problem by adopting a variant of schemes being tried in various places in the United States, most notably Boulder in Colorado and Berkeley in California. We have proposed that local authorities should adopt the same model to fund energy efficiency improvements through loans, collecting the repayments through the Council Tax. The money could be raised either through traditional borrowing or by issuing bonds

At a stroke this idea solves two main problems. There is no need for individuals to raise the money to make their homes more energy efficient in full, and the cost and benefits remain with the property so that whoever lives in it pays off the loan and receives the benefit.

The government recently announced plans for the general roll-out of smart meters by 2020 amid much comment about how potent a weapon this is in the battle to reduce energy consumption. The survey, however, revealed overwhelming scepticism over how much impact they will have and we share these reservations. Smart meters do have their uses; they will provide more accurate billing and eliminate the problem of estimated bills that are so frustrating to the customer. If and when they facilitate feed-in tariffs for small-scale micro-generation they will indeed be contributing to redressing the supply-demand balance.

At the present state of technology, however, they will do little or nothing to stimulate thorough-going behaviour change. This is the key to reducing domestic energy demand if we are not to experience state intervention on a scale unseen since wartime rationing. By contrast energy displays, informative in themselves and linked to a sophisticated web service that provide a broad range of personalized information, will provide the knowledge to stimulate behaviour change on a large scale.

We do not see displays, and the systems that support them, as alternatives to smart meters, but as complements to them. As the potential of information and communications technology to benefit both society and citizen in ways which are only now beginning to become clear, emerges, Onzo expects this combination of tools to provide a potent Twenty First Century solution to one of the gravest issues of the age.