Throwing the baby out with the bathwater: the end of 32 years of UK Energy Efficiency Obligations

Energy Efficiency Obligation Schemes have been a major component of UK energy efficiency policy for more than three decades. Under pressure to reduce energy bills and in light of recent evidence that revealed catastrophic failures in the ability of this policy to deliver high-quality retrofits at scale the UK government decided to terminate this policy instrument. The government's abolition of EEOSs represents a classic case of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”: discarding a proven policy instrument instead of addressing the governance failures that undermined its latest iteration. Whilst calamitous as an isolated policy failure and for the affected households, there are wider lessons to be learnt from the more systemic nature of this failure. Specific faults in the design of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), the current version of the UK Energy Efficiency Obligation Scheme, indicate how inadequate and outdated governance processes shaped the design and implementation of this policy for deep retrofit and created a disastrous failure. The lack of trust and flexibility demonstrated do not bode well for the radical change required for a just and effective decarbonisation. The discussion identifies practical solutions to shift governance arrangements towards the latter. • UK Energy Efficiency Obligation Schemes ended after 32 years of operation. • ECO4 failed due to governance and delivery mismatches, not instrument limits. • EEOSs are poorly suited to complex, capital-intensive retrofit measures. • Termination reflects abandonment rather than reform of a proven policy tool. • Lessons for aligning governance capacity with deep retrofit ambitions.