We are told that the still new Cameron-Clegg coalition is about to have a quangos bonfire, or at least a few select ones are said to be for the chop – green ones, to be precise. But maybe they won’t burn so easily – bit like green willow, really.
On the other hand, like green willow, maybe they could be woven together to create something more effective – and less confusing to the business community they purportedly serve.
But to create the proposed UK Green Investment Bank using the £2billion that Messrs Cameron and Clegg hope to raise from their bonfire? I’m not so sure about that, and for a variety of reasons that I’ll come to.
Speculation is that the Carbon Trust, Technology Strategy Board and Marine Renewable Deployment Fund, plus a bunch of other green quangos, will be torched – carbonised, so to speak.
It happens that I have worked for quangos. One was the White Fish Authority; the other was the Sea Fish Industry Authority, which was amalgam of the former WFA with the Herring Industry Board.
That was no bad thing as it created a body that had the potential to better serve the industry sector for which it was created. Of course, within the seafood industry, there certainly was, and doubtless still is, debate on the efficacy of SeaFish.
You have to ask the question: why not roll related quangos together, especially in the context of energy – and perhaps energy and the environment, given the remit of the Department of Energy and Climate Change?
Successive governments have threatened to burn quangos. But words seem not to have sparked the action promised.
Indeed, in the Thatcher-Major era, creating quangos was part of Tory policy over the period 1979-97 as it sought to cut the size of the central-government machine.
In the case of the Carbon Trust, while there are some aspects of this organisation and its actions that concern me, frankly I’m baffled as to why the Marine Renewable Deployment Fund was set up as a separate entity.
Why wasn’t it simply developed as a subset of the Carbon Trust’s remit instead of having its own CEO, staff of presumed experts and admin support? After all, it is engaged in maritime renewables, has doled out money to companies scratching around for cash to develop their ideas and has run design competitions including one for offshore turbine foundation design.
Turning to the Green Investment Bank concept, what will the model be? Is there one out there to clone from? Such as Simmons & Company International, for example? After all, it is the world’s leading energy investment bank.
How well will the new creation have to be capitalised to comply with the burdensome set of manacles being constructed to chain the big banks such as Barclays and RBS down and prevent them from straying from the financial straight and narrow?
What would become of all the “soft” and advisory work done by the likes of the Carbon Trust, not forgetting the design competitions, and so forth?
It’s obvious of course. Banks, even boutique entities, cannot perform the same sort of role as a quango such as the Carbon Trust – assuming, of course, that what the CT does is actually effective and delivering reasonable value for money in return for its annual allocation from the public purse.
Ergo, banks and quangos are completely different, even though the latter hand out money and make applicants jump through hoop after hoop after hoop to qualify, or perhaps get turned down.
It is true that a well funded infrastructure bank can be rather effective at providing capital for large-scale projects such as windfarms, and is, arguably, less vulnerable than the big brands turned out to be when they precipitated the credit crunch that all of us are paying through the nose for today.
But then who is going to fund activities such as university-led research that is still decades away from commercialisation – wave and tidal technologies fit that description, and so, too, do some aspects of carbon sequestration?
Dick Winchester has, from time to time, in his Both Barrels column, challenged the big banks to set up a fund to support development of new technologies. Even £500million would be a huge sum in that context and a fraction of the billions handed out as bankers’ bonuses by the self-same big banks.
Of course, such an entity would have to be run differently – that goes without saying.
Perhaps, then, Cameron and Clegg should press ahead with their green bank idea. But they should also give the big banks the option of doing as Winchester has so often suggested, or extract said money as a green levy or tithe from Barclays, RBS, HBOS and Co and plough it into the green bank, so removing the burden of helping to stimulate the birth and commercialisation of green energy, and so forth, which they’re not interested in anyway.
Which then begs the question: what ought to be done with the UK’s Energy Technology Institute, that private-public creation that grew out of New Labour and which also handles money?
Back to basic maritime safety competency in oil&gas and renewables. On Page 4, health and safety specialist Chris Streatfeild spells out why RenewableUK has embarked on a different approach to this critical issue than the oil&gas industry.
However, somewhere in all of this is, as he acknowledges, there is room for a measure of common ground with regards to safety competency, partly because that would help in terms of workforce flexibility, whether working in wind, oil&gas, carbon capture, gas storage, and so forth.
It has been suggested to both Streatfeild and David Doig, CEO of the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation, that a maritime energy industries safety summit be staged to which all relevant stakeholders, including the MCA, Health & Safety Executive, helicopter and maritime interests, be invited.
The purpose – to hammer out the basis of a common framework, but one which takes account of the difference characteristics of the various sub-sectors. I understand that the HSE may already be thinking down such a track.
As for a venue and time, Judith Patten has already suggested that Aberdeen could host such an event the day before next year’s All-Energy show in May.
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