SSE Airtricity is committed to playing our part in helping to improve the efficiency with which our customers use energy. We believe greater energy efficiency lessens the need for new generation stations and network infrastructure and will also reduce energy bills and our reliance on imported fossil fuels. This in turn will help reduce the impact our lifestyles have on our environment.
SSE Airtricity has been providing energy efficiency services to our customers since 2011. So far we have focused on providing our household customers with energy services such as natural gas boiler servicing, repair and replacement. We offer our commercial customers tailored energy management packages to help them understand how they consume power so as to reduce their energy use and costs. We fund significant energy efficiency improvements in local community buildings such as community centres, parish halls and schools through supports from our wind farm community funds. And we have partnered with local authorities and the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) to deliver large-scale energy-efficiency retrofits in qualifying households – a key tool in tackling fuel poverty – to meet the Government’s Affordable Energy Strategy. In all these ways we’re making a real difference for our customers and the wider community.
More can be done. However, we must ensure that this is achieved cost effectively. From 2014, the Energy Minister has set demanding targets for suppliers, with penalties for those suppliers if these targets are missed. Delivering these energy efficiency savings will put pressure on energy tariffs and customer bills.
To see this effect in action we need only look to Great Britain where an energy efficiency targets regime resulted in a growing increase in costs to customers. This increase in bills grew to such an extent that the Westminster Government recently decided to reduce suppliers’ targets and transferred the costs from customer bills to central taxation, a move that SSE actively campaigned for.
Here in Ireland, SSE Airtricity similarly believes costs incurred in meeting the Government’s energy efficiency policy should be met by the exchequer. The taxation system design is based on ability to pay and is more appropriate than recovering costs through energy bills. This move would help energy affordability and protect all energy customers especially our most-in-need customers who are struggling to manage their energy costs and those customers in fuel poverty. It’s a case that we have been actively making to Government.
Of course in other ways we will continue to make a real difference; by offering competitive tariffs to our electricity and gas customers (since 2009 SSE Airtricity has brought household savings totalling over €80 million to over half a million customers) and by continuing to innovate to bring products and services to customers that will help improve the energy efficiency of Irish homes and businesses.