Stephen Lovegrove
Permanent Secretary of the Department for Energy and Climate Change
How did you tackle the biggest challenges facing your organisation in 2014?
Energy and climate change issues have rarely been out of the news this year. This has brought huge challenges, but also opportunities for us as a department.
For example, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how we make sure consumers are being fairly treated and getting a good deal from suppliers. We’ve made switching faster and easier and cut an average £50 off energy bills.
We played a leading role in climate change negotiations, resulting in agreement on an ambitious EU target for greenhouse gas emission reduction. This is a crucial step to agreeing a global deal in Paris at the end of 2015.
We’ve also fast-tracked the recommendations of the Wood Review: Sir Ian Wood’s pioneering review to maximise oil and gas recovery in the North Sea. I’m very proud that the team behind the review won a Civil Service Award.
Against this backdrop, we’ve continued to drive forward electricity market reform – the biggest shake-up of the energy market since privatisation. We have awarded investment contracts worth £12bn to eight renewable projects, which could generate enough clean electricity to power over 3m homes by 2020.
We also moved a step closer to the first new nuclear power station in a generation, with the European Commission giving the green light to Hinkley Point C.
What are your department’s top priorities in the last months before the general election?
A top priority will continue to be electricity market reform. The first group of energy projects have applied for contracts, and the outcome will be known in the New Year. The first capacity market auction is coming up in December, and we’ve already received a high level of interest from large and small generators. The auction is a key part of delivering the capacity we need to keep the lights on at the lowest cost to consumers.
We also recently announced up to another £100m for household energy efficiency, taking the total funding over the last three years to more than half a billion pounds. It all builds on the 965,000 energy efficiency measures already installed through ECO and the Green Deal.
What’s your favourite Christmas treat? And what makes you say: ‘Bah, humbug!’?
For a treat at Christmas, I eat lots and lots of oysters. However I am a bit of a Scrooge when it comes to turkey, which I dislike intensely – there’s a reason we only eat it once a year!