This was Energy Minister Greg Barker’s show – and some show. He pulled in high level support and you don’t get much higher than ex-President Clinton, Arnie Schwarzenegger and a surprise personal appearance by David Cameron. Not to mention the Secretary of State for Energy Ed Davey, the chair of EEDO (The Energy Efficiency Deployment Office) Peter Boyd and the Deputy Mayor of London Richard Blakeway.
Barker seemed on relaxed form announcing this major government initiative to make sure that energy efficiency is no longer the Cinderella of the energy sector, pointing out a strongly supporting letter from Bill Clinton. Barker claimed the Coalition’s level of commitment, exceeding their initial 10% lead-by-example savings target, could not have been achieved without buy-in from the PM… and to reinforce the point here, we got suave Dave himself to say just that…
“But first… I nearly forgot” (Barker had forgotten) a video contribution from Arnold Schwarzenegger – Governor of the state of California which is 40% more energy efficient than the rest of the United States. After initial back-slapping praise for Cameron we had classic Arnie ending with “I am in Vienna so unfortunately I can not be with you – they don’t clone people yet and [stares] I’m not really the Terminator. But remember if you need help [stares] I’m here for you.”
Next on, Cameron rightly asked how you follow that and quipped about never getting Arnie to say “Hasta la Vista Gordon”, then came the Mission statement:
So where does this get us? Is this Groundhog Day (all over again) or is this the blinding LED light of the energy efficiency future? We will see but there was considerable promise in the array of “faces” and the idea that energy efficiency is seen as a route to economic competitiveness and also growth, the current Holy Grail.
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