The problem with plans and targets is what are you measuring, how?
We thought this was interesting:
Britons are going to have to spend upwards of £100 billion improving their homes if they are to meet the government’s energy efficiency regulations, analysts have estimated.
That idea that net zero is going to be cheaper takes a slight knock. As, logically, it cannot be cheaper. For if it were cheaper then we’d all do it anyway. The people insisting there must be plans and forcing of the issue are the very folk insisting it cannot be cheaper - otherwise, why the plans and the forcing?
But our point today is that it does matter what you measure, how:
Landlords are required to hit a minimum rating under upcoming rules and some mortgage providers take the certificates into account when lending.
But the way that the ratings are currently estimated means that replacing a traditional gas boiler with a heat pump can lower a home's energy efficiency rating.
That would seem to be a problem with the plans, no?
Given that heat pumps can actually increase energy use
Ah, the plan seems to be that in the name of energy efficiency we should use more energy. Plans of mice and men and all that.
The larger point though, beyond the snickering at people who have no clue about economics trying to manage an economy, is that near all such plans depend upon what it is that is being measured and how. All too often the details of what is being measured getting lost and thus the plans and targets not actually achieving the desired goal.
Take, for example, this idea that lots of “free” childcare will boost GDP. Sure, it will - but that’s because GDP measures monetised interactions. A detail that is really quite important. That children are taken care of seems to be a reasonable societal goal. But moving it from being something done by mothers inside the household to other young women (it is always largely young women who do this work either way) outside the household and intermediated by money doesn’t in fact change the amount of childcare going on. It just monetises that activity and so boosts GDP without actually changing anything else very much.
The method of measurement obscures the reality, not illuminates. We can go on - the concept of relative poverty means that poverty falls in recessions. Everyone gets poorer and poverty reduces?
It is, as the mantra goes, only possible to manage what you measure. But the method of measurement, the details of it, matters vastly for that method of management. Which is why we ourselves think that detailed management shouldn’t be done. Because no one ever does - not in politics - either understand nor even accept the implications of the detail of the measurement system.
If something really must be done then change the price system and leave folk to get on with it. Actual targets and plans just aren’t going to work. Even on important things they’re not going to. As here, we’re to save the planet from our energy consumption by installing heat pumps and increasing our energy consumption? And this is something that government is actually going to force us to do? Err, yes….