Draft:Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme

The UK's Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme (EEBPp) was an initiative of the Energy Efficiency Office (EEO) and was launched on 1st April 1989 when Cecil Parkinson was Energy Secretary. As a free-market enthusiast he cut the annual budget of the EEO and constrained its programmes to interventions that would not interfere with the role of free markets. The EEBPp was the EEO's response. The budget quickly rose however in response to the SAVE Directive of the European Economic Community (EEC) to £26m in 1990 and £59m in 1992. Managed by the Building Research Energy Conservation Support Unit at BRE with responsibility for buildings, and the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) at Harwell for industrial processes, the programme collated a wide range of technical and managerial information about energy efficiency, and disseminated it in concise guidance documents to a variety of carefully targeted audiences including owners and managers, and their advisors. It was reported as being world leading.

BRECSU and ETSU - Buildings and industry

Responsibility for delivering the EEBPp was divided into two areas: the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU) based at Harwell focused on industrial energy efficiency, and the Building Research Energy Conservation Support Unit (BRECSU), based at the Building Research Establishment addressed energy use in buildings. Both organisations produced motivational and guidance documentation, some technical, some non-technical in nature according to the target audience. The tasks of assembling the information and writing the guidance was let to specialist consultants and technical authors.

EEBPp for buildings

In the buildings sector key players for targeting were identified as:

• demand side: owners, managers, occupiers and developers
• facilitators: regulators, planners, politicians, funders, fuel suppliers, educators and the media
• supply side: architects, engineers, contractors, surveyors, manufacturers, suppliers and estate agents.

The market for advice was also disaggregated into:

• building sectors: such as houses, hospitals, houses, schools factories, shops, sports centres, hotels etc
• technologies: such as condensing boilers, low energy lights, insulation types
• practices: such as air conditioning, design methods, maintenance procedures.

Sectoral strategies were devised by BRECSU with the aim of ensuring the information provided was relevant to the needs, concerns and circumstances of each sector, and that guidance would achieve the maximum impact.

For the buildings sector, four types of material were produced:

• Energy Consumption Guides - enabling owners and operators to compare their energy use against their competitors
• Good Practice Guides and Case Studies - offering guidance on how to implement energy efficiency measures illustrated by evidence of the success achieved by others
• New Practice Case Studies - reporting on the achievements of those at the cutting edge of innovation
• Future Practice - supporting pre-competitive research and development in innovative products

Promotional events were run by BRECSU to promote the guidance, which was also posted to enquirers and distributed via professional institutions.

Legacy of the EEBPp

The technical and managerial guidance assembled, collated and disseminated by the Energy Efficiency Best Practice programme over almost a decade, before responsibility was handed to the Carbon Trust, was remarkable. In their 2014 paper Mallaburn and Eyre say "The library of technical information we [in the UK] have accumulated is probably the most comprehensive anywhere in the world." Numerically it ran into hundreds of carefully written, well illustrated, and quality-checked publications with high production values.

Unfortunately, there is no central record of the guidance that was published, nor any accessible repository. Much of it was distributed in hardcopy form and the programme ended before the storing and distribution of digital documents in pdf format had become commonplace. To the credit of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers some of their technical memoranda benefited from EEBPp support and are readily available. A small selection of of publications can be found on websites of some of the consultants responsible for writing the guides. Some guides may be in the libraries of consulting engineers and facilities managers.

Much of the guidance had beneficial measurable impacts at the time and some, obviously, has become obsolete since it was written. But, considering the scale of investment made by the Energy Efficiency Office for about a decade, the subsequent inaccessibility of the guidance has, arguably, reduced the potential long term legacy of the EEBPp.