Wednesday 2 December 2020

‘Regulation has a huge role to play in delivering net zero and driving business change’

Regulation has "a huge role to play" in delivering net zero and driving business change.

That was the suggestion from Trevor Hutchings, Director of Strategy and Communications at Gemserv, who spoke to future Net Zero about the need for smart policies and governance to facilitate the journey to a decarbonised society and energy system by 2050.

He said: "The starting point on this is around the arrangements of market governance, the rules, the standards, the policy, the regulation, the institutions, that need to all align to support and be a real enabler to this future net zero - at the moment it's quite a complex landscape and we need to make sure that's all working together to enable the kind of future that you describe."

Noting that regulation must be well-targeted and smartly implemented, he added: "The whole governance arrangement has got a really fundamental role to be an enabler, it creates markets, it creates demand for new services and it produces and provides confidence for investors to invest in the new technologies and the new business models that we need to see coming forward to enable net zero."

To illustrate his point, Mr Hutchings pointed out several good examples of smart regulation that have already been successfully delivered in recent years - he highlighted energy efficiency standards for white goods as an example of regulation that drastically improved efficiency, saved money and reduced emissions, all without consumers ever having been affected or having to be actively engaged.

He added the same has happened with tailpipe emissions from new cars, which have generally continually fallen as the government has incentivised cleaner systems and models to be introduced.