Energy

Michael Fallon is the Spectator’s Minister of the Year, nicknamed the ‘Minister for Royal Shale’ for his dual role in the privatisation of the postal service and getting fracking going in this country. He’s also the minister whose thinking most closely mirrors Number 10’s stance on the energy market at present, and so his speech at the Spectator’s energy conference yesterday wasn’t just an important glimpse into current government policy, but also future Conservative policymaking on energy. listen to ‘Michael Fallon speaking at the Spectator’s Energy Conference’ on Audioboo Significantly, the Energy Minister told the conference that the most important issues were ‘security of supply, affordability, and playing our part

The Conservative flirtation with environmentalism was never much more than a branding exercise. Now it is over. Today David Cameron wants to ‘cut the green crap’. Perhaps the Prime Minister has been influenced by David Rose’s cover piece in last week’s Spectator — which encouraged the government to repeal the Climate Change Act, abolish its targets, and stop the Energy Bill coming into force. Strong stuff. But let’s suppose the government really were to follow Rose’s strategy, what would happen? A shale gas revolution? Don’t bet on it. As the energy company Cuadrilla has admitted, domestic fracking would have an ‘insignificant‘ impact on prices. The US, which has seen prices fall,

The energy debate is in stasis. Everything, it seems, hangs on the contents of the Autumn Statement. EDF has announced a price rise; bills will go up by an average 3.9 per cent, which is considerably lower than the rest of the Big Six. Yet the company made clear that maintaining low prices will depend on George Osborne. A spokesman said: ‘If the Government makes bigger changes to the cost of its social and environmental schemes than EDF Energy has anticipated, the company pledges to pass these savings onto customers. However, if changes to social and environmental programmes are less than anticipated, the company may have to review its standard variable prices

Ed Miliband’s energy freeze pledge won him ‘political speech of the year’ but has had the unintended (yet inevitable) consequence of throwing the energy market into a spasm. The head of Npower, Paul Massara, has said that the political uncertainty means we may not have enough power to cover demand. He has told BBC Hardtalk:- ‘The amount of spare capacity to meet the peak requirement has dropped from somewhere around 15 per cent to five… and unless the UK can create a politically stable environment to attract new capital, that capital will not come in… The more government creates uncertainty with things like price freezes or other changes, it means there’s

Ed Miliband’s aides used to scurry around the parliamentary estate, their shoulders hunched. A look in their eyes suggested that they feared their boss’s harshest critics were right. But times have changed. Now Team Ed marches with heads high. The success of his pledge to freeze energy prices has given them a warm glow. Five weeks on from the Labour leader’s conference speech, his commitment still dominates political debate. It has boosted his personal ratings, helped his party increase its support in the polls and convinced his supporters that he might be Prime Minister after the next election. In these circumstances, one might expect the Tories to be panicking. But