The barriers to energy efficiency

However, I question your statement that 'all of these things [energy efficiency measures] cost money'. It ain't necessarily so. Their extra cost, if there is any, is recoverable (some sooner than later) out of the savings in ongoing costs. So why are the measures not standard practice by now? Because of the barriers. Here are a few of them:

• There is no incentive for contractors to opt for energy efficient techniques unless the specification calls for them, because they are in competition and lowest price rules.

• What specification? The good old days of competitive tendering against a detailed design, prepared by competent architects and engineers, have long gone.

• The developers, and after them the owners, of commercial buildings are not interested in energy efficiency because they don't have to pay to run the building. Power bills are paid by the tenants.

• The tenants of those buildings have little incentive to spend money on energy efficiency because their tenancy agreements are usually shorter term than the payback period of these measures. And anyway, the landlord probably owns the installations.

• Most energy users, with the exception of certain major industries, do not regard their power bills as significant. They are astonished when someone tells them that a 20% saving on electricity may be rewarded by a 20% increase in profits.

• An existing building may present many opportunities for economical energy savings as a whole, but when it's broken down into landlord's areas plus multiple (and shifting) tenancies redesign becomes uneconomic and full-scale implementation of viable measures virtually impossible.

The solution lies in education. By which I mean education of the decision makers in national and local governments.