Microgeneration Strategy Pre-Consultation for DECC
What was the problem?
In July 2010, the government announced a consultation on a new energy Microgeneration Strategy to help reduce the UK’s CO2 emissions and contribute towards the target of sourcing 20% of all EU energy from renewables by 2020.
In a change to recent practice, the Department of Energy and Climate Change decided to include a pre-consultation phase, inviting all those with expertise in the field to contribute to a draft strategy which could then be offered for wider consultation.
What did we do?
The broad scope of the consultation, the large and diverse group of stakeholders involved and the tight time constraints in place – just 10 weeks were allotted to the pre-consultation phase – made engineering a meaningful, productive dialogue a significant challenge.
Appointing SE2 to lead and report on the pre-consultation was the natural choice. We have run stakeholder events on government policy every year since 2006 and our experienced facilitators are not only well-known to the industry but have the background knowledge and logistical expertise to handle a project on this scale.
In order to focus discussion, we divided the 100-plus stakeholders into four work groups concentrating on different themes. Each of these groups met twice over
a seven-week period, led by two co-facilitators – one to steer the content of the discussion and one to act as chair and ensure everyone could have their say.
To enable maximum input from all sides, we set up an additional online forum that allowed the members of each group, and additional stakeholders who had not been invited to attend in person, to view the minutes from all of the meetings and contribute their own views.
What difference did we make?
SE2’s thorough understanding of the issues and wide-ranging experience in facilitation were key to the successful delivery of this complex, high-profile project. We were able to condense the full array of opinion, gathered over 24 hours of meetings and additional online consultation, into a 13-page report that accurately reflected the views and recommendations of the industry.
Our pre-consultation report was directly quoted by Greg Barker, Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, in his preface to the formal consultation paper and had a profound impact on the resulting strategy, launched in June 2011.
“The work SE2 did on the UK Microgeneration Consultation was exemplary. They not only made the consultation efficient and effective, they created a space and process that allowed an often complex and diverse industry, with many often opposing views, to begin to develop its own vision.”
Nicholas Doyle, Project Director, Places for People and Chair of the Technology Working Group