The Times, March 2010
There is a pressing need to address the contribution that housing in this country makes to CO2 emissions – around 27% at the last count. With little prospect of much new, energy efficient housing being built in the next decade, improving the energy efficiency of existing houses through retro-fitting is essential to meet the country’s carbon targets.
Making dull but necessary structural improvements, such as fitting loft insulation and better double glazing, to the places we live is important, but so is teaching us to behave differently. Turning down the thermostat, turning off the lights, using appliances more efficiently, and so on. The real scope for sustainable and sustained change lies when people do both.
This presents a huge opportunity for the homes and gardens sector. Retailers are well placed to provide the products and services needed to improve domestic energy efficiency, through the sale of energy efficient products and services. But they are also well placed to change the way we behave. When we are in their stores, we are focused on what they are selling, and what they are telling us. We’re a willing audience, receptive to their messages.
And many retailers in this sector are already developing solutions that go beyond just providing low carbon products in their stores. From B&Q’s recently launched Pay As You Save pilot scheme in London, its “One Planet Home” range and its environmental “store within a store”, to Homebase’s EcoHome initiative, helping customers make low cost environmental purchases, we are seeing significant investment in energy saving products and services designed to lower the customer’s carbon footprint and cut their energy bills. The retailers are not only tapping in to the growing demand (the market for green home improvement has grown from £1.4bn in 1999 to £7bn in 2008), but also in these tough economic times reaching out to what Ian Cheshire, the B&Q Chief Executive, calls the “greener, thriftier consumer”.
And this is bearing fruit. This month’s exclusive Concerned Consumer Index survey for The Times, conducted by Populus, shows increasing levels of trust and consumer confidence that the sector is doing its bit to tackle climate change. 58% of consumers say that they think the sector is doing enough to address social and environmental issues – up 11% from 2008, and the highest level in any of the sectors we cover in the Index.
This is definitely good news for the sector. But there is something else interesting going on. Some retailers have announced partnerships with energy companies, offering discounts on energy efficient items such as thermostatic radiator valves and insulation products. Supported by big advertising budgets, these promotions come from the energy companies’ requirement to spend a percentage of their revenues on installing energy efficiency measures in our homes. Carbon Emission Reduction Targets, or CERTs, cost energy companies billions of pounds each year – £3bn will be invested through CERTs between 2008 and 2011.
However, most investment from energy companies in meeting these targets has been through structural changes, such as providing loft insulation or energy saving light bulbs direct to the consumer(even if some of those 42 million light bulbs sent out in the last quarter are now sitting in draws), particularly amongst those at risk of fuel poverty. The challenge is that an approach which relies on shoehorning energy efficiency measures onto people without the support of a broader set of messages about changing the way we act is going to struggle to achieve broad and sustainable change. A man comes and asks if you’d like some loft insulation, you say yes, and he fits it and leaves. Your energy bills might be lower, but in terms of producing long lasting changes in behaviour, it’s pretty ineffective. And there’s something a little counterintuitive about an energy company, which makes more money when it sells me more energy, offering me ways to reduce my energy bills.
When funds are channelled into solutions that let consumers choose how and when they manage their energy usage, and gives them the information they need to make a real choice – in other words, when energy companies work in partnership with DIY retailers, who not only know how to sell us things we need and want but also have more credibility in this space, there’s a shift from the supply side of the solution to the demand side. We’re focusing on behaviour change, rather than just structural change. And that’s when we start to see big and sustained change.
So when the Government next starts to think about using business to deliver sustainable change, perhaps it should not only think about businesses with the operational capability to deliver it but also those that can actually take the consumer with them too. We might all save time and money and create a far bigger impact in the end – which surely is what it’s all about isn’t it?
