Taking steps to ensure continued climate stability must be “a national security priority for any government”, the Environmental Audit Committee said in a new report and tackling the immediate energy security and affordability issues caused by the war in Ukraine does not entail abandoning climate ambitions or putting them on pause. Accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels will enhance the UK’s energy security and help to protect households permanently from volatile fossil fuel prices.
The EAC said despite some merits including strong targets for the roll-out of low-carbon electricity generation The government’s Energy Security Strategy “is in essence an energy supply strategy”. It should have placed far greater emphasis on energy saving measures and included transport.
On energy efficiency the committee said £1 billion of funding planned over the next three years “is not commensurate with the scale or urgency of the energy security challenge. With over six million households now in fuel poverty, action on energy efficiency needs to be ramped up urgently.” It said “Ministers missed a crucial window of opportunity during the warmer months of 2022” and it should spend money immediately, as it is a “false economy” to hold money back “at a time when households are struggling, and the taxpayer is having to spend billions to subsidise energy bills”.
It called for an immediate national ‘war effort’ push on energy saving and efficiency, making upgrades to all homes in England at band D or below to band C as a “national priority”.
It also wants an objective to deliver at least 1 million installations a year by 2025 and 2.5 million a year by the end of the decade and urgent measures to incentivise energy efficiency improvements via the mortgage market.

Digital future
The committee said the Energy Security Strategy “appears to reflect a 20th century approach to energy security” by prioritising big, centralised power plants to meet fixed demand. A smarter, more flexible, digitally-enabled grid, could have important implications for other elements of the government’s energy strategy – for instance, how much baseload electricity is necessary and how much grid distribution capacity is needed. It wants to see the a progress report in 2023 on the joint Ofgem and BEIS Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan. It also called for a link with the transport sector, which is “ barely mentioned” in the British Energy Security Strategy and was left out of the new national ambition to reduce energy consumption by 15% by 2030. It BEIS “is failing to drive the departments responsible for other high emitting sectors, such as transport and buildings, to accelerate their own contribution to energy security and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
It recommended that those departments contribute to a comprehensive update to the British Energy Security Strategy in the spring of 2023.
It also said that the government needs to consider the impact on its ability to exert international influence on phasing out of unabated coal of its decision to permit a new coal mine to be opened in Cumbria. The coking coal to be mined there has limited application in the UK steel industry.

Download the full report here