Philip Sellwood: Man with a mission to reduce energy use

Carly Chynoweth

Philip Sellwood could be forgiven if he feels a tiny bit pleased every time he hears of electricity suppliers increasing prices or double-digit percentage rises in gas bills. Not because he has solar panels and a sense of Schadenfreude, but because it makes his life - his working life, at least - a little easier.
As chief executive of the Energy Saving Trust (EST), which next week hosts Energy Saving Week, his job is to persuade householders to draw their curtains, switch to low-energy light bulbs and generally do whatever they can to reduce the energy they use.
“There is a big downside, of course, but there is no doubt that the price of oil and fuel going up ... certainly concentrates people's minds,” Mr Sellwood, chief executive since 2003, said. “They are much more aware of what they are using and it is making our messages easier to get across.”
It is not simply recent market shifts that have led to this change; there has also been a turnaround in the general public's attitude to climate change. Mr Sellwood, who has a private sector background in retailing and company turnarounds, said: “Five years ago, I felt like a man in the dark shouting out with a big megaphone and hoping that people were listening. People were happy to give you a polite response but they did not really see it as central to what they should be thinking about. Now, people largely do get it. It doesn't mean that everybody is doing what they should be doing but I don't spend too much time these days persuading audiences that this is an important agenda.”

People seem to be listening; since last month, when the Prime Minister announced measures to help households to reduce their energy bills, calls to the EST's advice line have doubled. Although some callers are driven by a desire to cut their carbon footprints, most are more interested in the prospect of cost savings of about £300 a year. The EST says that even people who have to pay the full cost of cavity wall insulation or other energy- efficiency measures (the government package helps those on low incomes) should recoup the cost in lower bills within a few years and continue to see savings for many more years to come.
However, lining up against the publicity advantages of a downturn is the possibility that current economic upheavals could lead to governmental belt-tightening that could affect the EST - which receives 97.5 per cent of its funding from government - or the climate change agenda more broadly. “Clearly there will be a real strain on resources from a government perspective but the general view is that this [climate change] is not a short-term fix,” Mr Sellwood said.
Recent statements by Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, and indeed the creation of his new post, suggest that the Government understands this.
Mr Sellwood said: “We will be fighting very hard to keep our share of the resources. The other thing that suggests that [cuts] won't happen is that we are now talking about nearly 6 million households in fuel poverty and so I think that politically it might be very difficult for them to cut it at the moment.”
Clearly the organisation will face pressure to be ever more effective and efficient - “There is no question that everybody will be looking at us and saying ‘we want more for the same or probably even more for less'” - but Mr Sellwood does not expect his organisation to merge with the Carbon Trust, which has the apparently related task of helping organisations and industry to reduce their carbon emissions.
“There are always people looking to see whether the organisations being brought together could be more efficient,” he said. “They have looked at the idea in the past couple of years, but came to the conclusion that a merger would end up creating more bureaucracy; the trusts' different remits mean that a merged organisation would need two separate teams to get the work done, with another layer of management over the top.”