Political Symbolism

News of two political symbols:

The White House will, after all, be installing solar thermal and PV panels (next spring)

and

HMG departments' energy use is now on-line.

Of course, as with much in the world of energy efficiency and sustainable energy, these individual acts will not, in themselves, make a huge difference to actual usage. However, they are very visible and do something to deflect the cynical argument that governments demand that we do as they say, not as they do.

The rating web site has some teething problems - as of today it is comparing the first  4 days in October (including 2 weekend days) with the totality of September and so is, not surprisingly, appearing to show large month on month savings - obviously a nonsence. However, what one can do is drill through to the energy rating certificate of each department's principal building. Both DECC (at Whitehall Place) and Defra (at Nobel House) are in E-rated buildings. What would be interesting to see over time would be what physical and behavioural measures are being put in place in each building in order to improve those ratings. If the White House can install solar panels how about government departments in Whitehall? Also, what about other departmental buildings? My memory of Defra's Ergon House (and my memory can play me false) is that it has a worse than E rating. To DECC's credit they also have (almost) instantaneous demand displayed on their home page. Hopefully this display will be adapted over time to cover more than the 24 hours currently shown. It's a good start! Are other departments doing the same (a quick search failed to find anything similar for Defra)? Spreadsheet-based datasets are available from the energy rating pages but that requires a bit of digging and then some user-analysis.