Mike Foster, Chief Executive of EUA said “We are pleased that Labour has said they will tackle energy efficiency and build more homes, 2 of the key asks from our members. But we were promised that the last government would be the greenest government ever and that didn’t turn out as planned. So if Labour wins the next election we would hope to see full plans on how they aim to deliver on these promises and ask that they involve industry in the planning stages. Delivering meaningful changes to the energy efficiency of the UK housing stock is difficult and only by working with us will any government be able make progress.”

Commenting on the Conservative Manifesto,

“We are disappointed that there are no concrete measures in the Conservative manifesto to help improve the energy efficiency of UK homes. In fact energy barely gets a look in. If the Conservatives win the election the heating industry will need more support from government to tackle the age and inefficiency of UK homes. We need a long term plan and full government support.”

Mr Foster continued reviewing the Green Party manifesto:

“Surprisingly there is little support for wider energy efficiency measures in the Green Party manifesto. A lot of support for insulation and solar PV, but nothing about how we will heat our homes. Energy efficiency is not all about insulation and if the Green Party is serious about green issues they need to recognise this.”

Reviewing the Liberal Democrats manifesto:

“Recognition of Carbon Capture Storage and Unconventional Gas Exploration, in the wider energy strategy is a welcome move by the Liberal Democrats. However we are disappointed that their manifesto has no explicit mention of heat. We need to do more than just insulate homes.

Overall the manifesto contains some very ambitious targets, although it is not yet clear how these can be met. We would hope this would include working with industry, because this is the only way to achieve energy efficiency improvements in homes. This is an ambitious manifesto and we wouldn’t want it to fail because they again failed to listen to industry. “

Mr Foster finished with the UKIP manifesto:

“The UKIP manifesto is a plethora of contradictions. They want to ban wind farms because they believe they are expensive and ruin the landscape, yet they want to encourage coal mining, which requires subsidies to survive and is damaging to the environment. Scraping the Climate Change Act will lead to higher future energy bills, not lower as they claim and will reverse the steady progress we have been making.”

EUA has written its own manifesto which can be read at http://issuu.com/energyandutilitiesalliance/docs/manifesto/1