As well as an exhibition covering sectors like energy monitoring and targeting; heating and air conditioning; lighting voltage optimisation; thermography and water softening, .the event will also feature a conference programme broken into two distinct streams:

• A discussion of recent legislation by key trade organisations;
• An Energy Insight conference, which will bring together speakers from fields including economics, climate change, energy policy and security, the nuclear industry, demand management and carbon reductions.

Legislation update

A number of trade organisations - ESTA (Energy Services and Technology Association), MEUC (Major Energy Users Council), Envirowise and CIBSE (Chartered Institute if Building Service Engineers) - will focus on areas of ongoing concern such as lighting; drives and controls and compressed air as well as current legislation issues.

Such legislation includes the Energy Services Directive – sure to feature heavily on the conference programme. This directive covers all forms of energy (except aviation and bunker fuels) and applies to all energy users (except those involved with the EU carbon emissions trading scheme) and providers of energy efficiency measures; energy distributors; distribution system operators; and retail energy sales companies.

The key requirements of the directive are:

• An energy savings target of 9% by 2017;
• That the public sector is to fulfil a lead role;
• That EU Member States are required to place obligations on energy suppliers and distributors to promote energy efficiency;
• That there are to be requirements on metering and billing to allow customers to make more informed decisions about their energy use.

In addition, the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will also feature prominently on the seminar agenda of ESTA, which will discuss a “cap and trade” scheme due to begin in April 2010. This will require participants to purchase and then redeem certificates against their energy use. It will affect larger end energy users such as multi-site businesses with yearly electricity consumption greater than 6000MWh per year, and will apply to emissions from direct energy use as well as electricity purchased.

Central to its implementation is a league table that will be used to reward those that perform well, while penalising those that do not. The CRC directive will have cash flow implications and it has been estimated that an energy saving of 5% will be needed to cover the average cost of administration within an organisation.

The CRC will be the focus of two seminars given by ESTA on the 9 September. The first will cover the basic aspects of the directive and the penalties which companies may face for non-conformance, in addition to the topic of creating an evidence pack. In the second, ESTA will advise on strategies for dealing with the CRC, suggesting that businesses should avoid the implications of poor performance by acting on the directive within its first year.

ESTA will also consider The Fundamentals of energy management on both days of the event, covering areas such as site energy policy; completing a site energy assessment and implementing energy cost reduction programs.

Insights into energy

The Energy Insight conference theme considers the pace of the economy’s recovery and asks the million dollar question, can UK plc adapt to the new world in time to meet its 2020 emissions targets?
Confirmed speakers include Sudhir Junankar, associate director of Cambridge Econometrics (CE), which will present a paper entitled UK energy Demand and Emissions Prospects.

Sudhir directs the use of MDM, CE’s energy-environment-economy model of the UK economy, to implement studies exploring the outcome for energy demand, emissions and the UK economy in a wide range of scenarios.

Recent projects he has directed include the impact of the recession on gas, electricity and overall UK final energy demand for RWE npower; an evaluation of the impact of the recession on the UK’s carbon budgets for the Committee on Climate Change, and an assessment of the evidence of the impact of climate change mitigation actions on Non-Annex 1 countries - to assist the Department of energy and Climate Change in preparing the UK’s negotiating stance at the December 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

Other speakers and their papers include:

• Keith Parker, ceo, Nuclear Industries Association, Nuclear Energy’s role in the UK’s current and future energy mix;
• Johnathan Malsbur, head analyst, New Carbon Finance, Funding major low carbon projects in the credit crunch;
• Chris Train, network operations director, National Grid, National Grid’s Future: smart grid, renewable infrastructure ;
• Terry Wyatt, former president of CIBSE, who will speak about Dynamic Demand.