I am delighted to say that the Department of Energy in conjunction with Conoco has agreed to sponsor another schools competition later this year. [end p1]
This competition will run from the autumn term up to March 1983. And its theme is a very important one. It is not simply about how to save energy, how to use it economically, but how to communicate the energy conservation message. In other words, how to persuade people to save energy, to use it more efficiently.
As a politician, I am concerned every hour of every day with explaining ideas, policies, measures. With persuading people to act in their own best interests, though often not as they have grown used to behaving.
So I shall take a very close interest in the next competition. For I shall hope to learn something useful about how to communicate ideas and how to get people to act on them. [end p2]
It is, I think, a very important development that the Department of Energy and Conoco have decided that this competition should get down to the basic problem of all those concerned with energy conservation: how to persuade, encourage and actually motivate people to use energy more economically.
But why is it important to save energy; to make the best possible use of it; or in the words of this competition's slogan: Let's make energy go further?
The most dramatic answer to that is the fact that there are now more than three million people unemployed in Britain. There are, I am sorry to say, over ten million people unemployed in Europe. And tragically many, many—too many—more millions unemployed all over the industrial world. [end p3]
Why?
There is one basic reason, though not, of course, the whole story.
That reason is the price of oil. When I first went into Downing Street as Prime Minister oil cost $14 a barrel. Now it is about $35 a barrel. That is a huge increase in little more than two years, coming on top of earlier savage increases.
What that meant was that the money needed to keep industry's wheels turning, to heat offices and to keep ourselves comfortable at home, reduced the amount of money available to buy other things. [end p4]
So inevitably the demand for other things fell and so unemployment rose.
I can't think of a better reason for saving energy than to reduce its cost and so make more money available to buy other goods. That in turn will increase the demand for products from our factories and so create more jobs.
So all the schools which have taken part in this competition—and not least the winners gathered here today—have been performing a great national service. They have been identifying ways in which we can save not merely energy—which one day will be scarce—but also to reduce costs. [end p5]
And in identifying ways of reducing costs all the schools in this competition have been pointing the way to improving the way our companies and country can earn our keep in the world. That in turn means they have been identifying one of the ways of reducing unemployment—of creating more jobs.
For energy conservation is just one—but a very important—method of improving our efficiency as a nation.
It is also a very important way of making the money we spend on education go further, in the spirit of this national competition. For every pound that isn't spent on energy in our schools is available for more books, better facilities, better teaching. [end p6]
I hope that all the education authorities responsible for the schools who took part in this competition will take a long, hard look at the winning projects. They will, I am sure learn something to their advantage. For any responsible education authority ought to be in the business of the teams in this competition—making energy go further.
Let's hope we'll see your ideas developed and turned to everybody's advantage.
What greater compliment could be paid to your painstaking work in this competition than that your parents will have to pay lower rates and know, at the same time, that more money is available to give you a better education Simply because you have found a way of saving energy—and money. For where there's energy these days, there is, like muck, brass—money.