Is it just me?

Has anyone else noticed that the A-G ratings on energy performance certificates (below) run in descending order from 100 to 0, while on display energy certificates (right) they're in ascending order from 0 to "over" 150? Are they related? I think we should be told!

Well-intentioned stupidity

The problem is that unlike washing machines etc (where appliance ratings have worked effectively) buildings are of widely varying sizes and energy consumptions. So a performance index tells you nothing about how much energy (in absolute terms) they appear to be wasting. Furthermore, since these are public buildings, their operators are under public and political scrutiny. So attention tends to focus on G-rated buildings and effort inevitably goes into these even though they may not offer the biggest or easiest opportunities. Further up the scale, the easiest way to spin a good environmental story is to concentrate on borderline cases - those nearest the tops of their respective bandings - since these are easy to promote to the next band without having to save very much energy.

In reality, the biggest and most worthwhile savings may well be found through modest improvements to larger buildings. The risk, unfortunately, is that such improvements may not result in those buildings getting promoted to the next band. Under these circumstaces it takes a very brave and perhaps foolhardy energy manager to do his or her job properly. DECs are almost certainly causing the wrong buildings to be targeted across the whole of the country.

The certificates themselves are a total triumph or form over content. They are 99% decoration and, when deconstructed, can be shown to contain just five pieces of information that are of any real value to the user; these are in small type and actually require further arithmetic in order to permit meaningful interpretation of the building's performance.

Don't get me started on the dubious 'norms' against which performance is judged, nor the 'drive-by shooting' approach to recommended improvements...

Sometimes it seems the UK leads the world in methods for suppressing energy conservation. Here are some particularly effective techniques that I would recommend to other countries that would also like to make a pig's ear of things:

1. Rebrand energy management as carbon management: make the whole subject abstract and irrelevant. If possible put loads of emphasis on trading, rather than reducing, emissions.

2. Offer grants, subsidies, and tax breaks: create the impression that energy saving is costly and not worthwhile in its own right.

3. Impose a compulsory trading scheme on medium-sized users: you could call it something like the 'Carbon Reduction Casino' and it could for example have these features:

1. Impose onerous requirements for data collection backed up with threats of imprisonment. Masterstroke: get participants bogged down in chasing that elusive last 5% of metering.
2. Give credit for installing automatic metering, Masterstroke: get people to spend money on that rather then energy-saving measures.
3. Give credit for achieving the C*****n T***t Standard. Double masterstroke: that scheme is as much about other greenhouse gas emissions and earns earn revenue for a commercial subsidiary of the QANGO that runs it.
4. Make participants buy credits up front. Double masterstroke: deprive them of working capital and covertly keep the cash off the public-sector borrowing requirement.
5. Base the results on improvement against a base year. Masterstroke: get participants to postpone energy-saving measures rather than play their hand too soon.
6. Make it a league-table contest. Masterstroke: "do nothing" is every participant's best option, and because uncertainties in the data will send people careering from one end of the league table to the other, nobody will have the faintest idea how much is at stake and what they should invest to win it.