Member Article

MPs have got it wrong over smart meters, says green guru

Green energy guru Tim Cantle-Jones has dismissed criticism by MPs of the Government’s plans to install “smart” gas and electric meters in every home and small business.

Cantle-Jones – Managing Director of Newcastle-based Future Energy Smart – was responding to the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, which said today that smart meters would help consumers save “only two per cent” on their power bills.

Public Accounts Committee Chair Margaret Hodge said consumers would make a net saving of only about £26 on the average annual bill of £1,328 and added: “Even this is conditional on consumers changing their behaviour and cutting their energy use.”

But Cantle-Jones, who has worked on a number of energy-saving projects across North East England, said the evidence was that savings could be about five times that level.

Cantle-Jones has worked as an adviser on various community energy projects, on the Government’s Green Deal scheme, and in the development of low-energy lighting. His new company, Future Energy, is busy training a new generation of people to fit the nation’s “smart” electricity and gas meters.

“Criticism of smart metering occurs either people are misinformed,” he said.

“However, if the smart meter installation programme is delivered alongside a major public information programme on energy saving, then our evidence shows that savings of ten per cent can be achieved.”

He cited live trials in places such as Craghead, near Stanley, County Durham, in which the focus had been on working closely with local people to help them to reduce their energy use.

He also rejected criticism from MPs that the technology might be out of date before it was even installed. “Technology is developing all the time but the installation of smart meters will be a huge step forward and this will lead in time to a ‘smart grid’ that will see the management of energy become much efficient.”

He said that smart meter installation would have been heavily criticised if it had gone ahead without the rigorous trials that had taken place over the past few years.

Suggestions that smart meters could be replaced by mobile phones were, he said, a complete red herring and demonstrated a lack of understanding by MPs.

“I think that they must be talking about the home display, which draws its information from the smart gas and electric meters. But you can’t have a home display without these meters and nor could you have a phone app without them. At the end of the day, using your phone to manage your energy is really just an option that would be used by a small minority of people.”

Visit the website at www.future-energy.org.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by We Are Sparkle .