‘We need to show what we’re trying to do is worth it’: voice of the UK energy industry steps down

After five years making Energy UK ‘noisier’ on green issues, Emma Pinchbeck has been picked to lead the UK’s fight against global heating

‘Iwas a risk when they hired me,” smiles Emma Pinchbeck. The chief executive of Energy UK, the voice of the industry, is hours away from a black-tie awards event that will serve as her unofficial leaving do. After almost five years in the role, she will join the government’s climate watchdog, the Climate Change Committee, in a matter of days.

“It’s pretty funny to remind people of this now, but I was an untested risk. I don’t think back in 2019 if you’d said to the energy industry, ‘who would you want as a spokesperson for the sector in a time of crisis?’ that they’d necessarily have chosen someone like me.”

Pinchbeck was approached for the job when her first child was still a newborn. The former head of climate policy at WWF had stood out in her role as the deputy chief executive of trade group RenewableUK for her outspoken advocacy of Britain’s low-carbon agenda. Understandably, a large part of the interview process focused on whether she could be a good fit advocating for companies with fossil fuel interests, too.

“And not once in five years has it been a problem,” says Pinchbeck. While there may have been disagreements about the bolder elements of the government’s net zero plan in the early days of her tenure, these were settled years ago. Today, the shift to cleaner energy is less about a green ideology than an economic opportunity.

It is unclear whether that message will endure in the US, where the re-election of Donald Trump has already created jitters for renewables developers across the globe. Pinchbeck is hopeful. “The US has grown to be one of the biggest markets in the world for things like batteries and onshore wind, and a lot of that happened under the last Trump presidency. One of the fastest-growing professions in the US was windfarm technician.

“The thing that I’m closely watching is the Inflation Reduction Act. It was really delivering in a lot of industrialised states – in red states – and helped to establish factories and jobs. It’s possible that there won’t be too much change because these policies are bluntly useful for the narrative that the Trump campaign has led on – improving the economy and improving domestic industry. As ever in politics, you have to distinguish the noise from what will actually happen, and it is genuinely too early to tell.”

Pinchbeck is confident the economic arguments on the shift to renewable energy will win. “I hardly ever talk about climate change and emissions in this job. We just call it economics,” she says.

So perhaps choosing a relative outsider to lead this change was a prescient move by Energy UK? “The board … felt strongly that energy was really important to the economy but was often overlooked or treated as a political toy. But they also understood that net zero was coming and that the whole sector was changing. So the question was, could I change what we were about, and what we were for? Could I make energy more politically resonant?”

Pinchbeck has managed exactly that, according to industry veterans. Whereas Energy UK was once seen as a staid, somewhat defensive voice for the former “big six” energy companies, they say it now reflects an industry alive with green ambition.

“We’re noisier than we used to be,” Pinchbeck says. “We are more relevant, too. We’re in more rooms, having more serious conversations with more serious people than we were five years ago. But it would just be flattering my ego to believe that I’ve had anything to do with energy being so much in the news.”

Months after she took up the role, the world was plunged into the pandemic, forcing people into their homes and driving up energy bills. However, energy market prices tumbled, in a blow to the country’s power generators. When market prices stormed back after the reopening of major economies, the UK’s energy companies faced fresh peril: surging costs caused scores of them to collapse into administration, leaving millions of homes in flux.

The suppliers that survived faced further price rises when Russia cut gas supplies to Europe as it invaded Ukraine. Now, as conflict flares in the Middle East, energy market prices show no sign of returning to pre-Covid levels.

Pinchbeck is clear the crisis is not over. “At least not in how people are experiencing it. That’s because people were already struggling [with their bills] in the run-up to the energy crisis. Government support helped, but people got into debt during the energy crisis, and that debt is now deepening.”

The official figure for energy company debts stands at a record £3bn. But from the conversations Pinchbeck has had with individual energy suppliers she believes that the real figure could be far higher.

“We’ve been calling for a package of government support for this winter since last April. Every year we finish a winter and say, ‘next winter is still going to be really challenging for customers, could we do something?’ Nothing happens until maybe September, when rising energy bills become a political problem again,” she says.

The solutions offered by government are typically too little and too late to have a long-term impact on the affordability of energy for struggling households. These interventions also cost the government more than they need to, she says.

Pinchbeck’s final demand of the government is: “Come up with an enduring solution for people’s energy bills: be thoughtful about bills alongside the other changes to the energy system. There are 99 good ideas out there that the government could start thinking about.”

She says the government could move some of its green levies from electricity bills on to gas bills, as well as into general taxation, which would help to make electric vehicles and heat pumps more affordable. She also urges officials to consider a social tariff, which directs help to homes which most need the support.

“It’s a boring technocrat’s point, but for the past 14 years there have been fairly regular calls for the Department for Work and Pensions to share its data on what vulnerability looks like with other government departments which are trying to help these homes. We need to know who these people are. In a crisis, who are the people who need help first? There needs to be a shared data infrastructure. I would love to see that happen,” she says.

Britain’s energy industry has seen radical change in the five years since Pinchbeck took the helm of its trade body. But it is in the next five years that the transformation will pick up pace. To reach the government’s ambition of creating a clean electricity system by 2030, the sector will need to double onshore wind power, triple solar farms, and quadruple offshore wind capacity. The UK will also need to build out twice the grid infrastructure it built in the last decade in the next five years.

“The challenge is how you do that, and how you take the public with you when you’re building all this infrastructure?” says Pinchbeck. “How do you make sure that it’s fair to communities across the country, and then do you fund that transition so people feel the costs are shared fairly across the economy at a time when a lot of people are still struggling to afford energy as an essential service?”

The key to this is showing the public the “brilliant economic ­benefits” of the energy transition, Pinchbeck says. “Make what we’re doing visible to ordinary people; show that what we’re trying to do is worth it. If we can do that, then a lot of the questions about politics just go away.”

CV

Age 38
Family Married, two children, aged two and five.
Education MA (Oxford), advanced leadership programme at Cranfield School of Management.
Pay Six figures plus a performance related bonus. Energy UK executives did not take their full pay award during the energy crisis.
Last holiday Family trip to the Channel Islands (on the ferry!).
Best advice she’s been given “If in doubt, the truth will nearly always do it” (my 90-year-old Grampy).
Biggest regret “My working style has sometimes impacted on my team’s workloads. I hope I’ve now apologised enough to them.”
Phrases she overuses “Sorry, but I’m running late”; “My two small humans”.
How she relaxes Before the two small humans, exercise. Now, cooking with the radio on.

Cover photo: Emma Pinchbeck: ‘We’re having more serious conversations with more serious people.’ Photograph: Sophia Evans/The Observer