Solution isn't rocket science

THERE are slivers of common sense in the dense report of the Prime Minister's task group on energy efficiency, released yesterday.

The most sensible is the quaint idea that it would be better to obtain reliable evidence relevant to energy efficiency - before billions of dollars have been spent on myriad policies, programs, grants, subsidies, sprawling bureaucracies and ministerial photo opportunities.

The task group reports: "At present Australia does not have a body or process with the mandate to collect and link energy-efficiency data, to analyse it, or to help people gain access to it. Ultimately this deficiency exposes both business and the different levels of government to the risk of 'being in the dark' in seeking to optimise energy efficiency."

It is a remarkable admission that we don't know if much of what we are doing in relation to energy efficiency, at great cost, is actually working. But it is undoubtedly true.

Public service insiders blame the desire to appear green and the irresistible appeal to politicians and their advisers of an "announceable" - something that will get a positive run in the daily news cycle. The evidence to back it up? Worry about that later.

There are nearly 300 energy-efficiency programs being run by the federal and state government and they consume great wads of public money.

The fundamental problem - identified five years and several billion dollars ago by a Productivity Commission report into energy efficiency - is the failure to test the ideas before spending.

The colossal waste has only begun to be documented: debacles such as Green Loans, home insulation, the hopelessly flawed star rating schemes for homes, and the use of wrong and old weather data for buildings.

The federal Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency carries much of the low-hanging fruit that symbolises the sort of maladministration identified last week in the Green Loans report by the National Audit Office, but the states will have their share too.

As Engineers Australia told the Prime Minister's task group: "Measuring energy efficiency and energy-efficiency improvement are essential elements of a national . . . strategy. Without robust metrics the message . . . becomes a cloud of motherhood statements."

The CSIRO, our peak scientific body, pleaded with the task group for accurate data and "evidence-based approaches".

It's not rocket science.