Energy

After the Conservative Party Conference, Fraser described this statement in George Osborne’s speech as the Osborne Doctrine: ‘Let’s at the very least resolve that we’re going to cut our carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe.’ The Government’s current climate policy clearly fails that test, as I set out for this site at the time, and there is no more egregious violation than the carbon floor price. It is one of those policies that can sound reasonable in theory: the EU Emissions Trading System creates a carbon market. That market produces a carbon price that is supposed to encourage business to invest in

Chris Huhne’s article in the Telegraph this morning attacking those who think that shale gas can solve Britain’s energy needs is built around a straw man of an argument. Huhne claims that, ‘Some therefore argue that we should abandon everything else and devote ourselves wholly to shale.’ This is, to put it mildly, a dubious claim. Advocates of shale gas don’t want to abandon all other forms of energy, they just want Britain to properly exploit an energy resource which could be as significant for Britain as North Sea oil has been. The Energy Secretary’s aversion to shale is even more puzzling when you consider how keen he is for

It’s just baffling. The House of Commons committee on energy has today published a report entitled “UK Energy Supply: Security or Independence?” with hardly a mention of the 200 trillion cubic feet of Shale gas recently found outside Blackpool. As Matt Ridley wrote recently in his definitive Spectator piece, these reserves – if exploited – are “enough to keep the entire British economy going for many decades. And it’s just the first field to have been drilled.” It may well be that just a fifth of this are exploitable, but there is no mention of this potentially game-changing discovery in the committee’s report today. Instead, we are told that “is

One of the striking things about politics at the moment is that Ed Miliband is proving adept at spotting issues that are going to become big — think the squeezed middle, energy prices — but is failing to drive home this advantage. There’s scant evidence that, for instance, the voters regard Miliband as the solution to the problem of rising energy bills. I suspect that the coalition’s plans to make it easier for people to switch tariff and supplier will cut through with the public more than Miliband’s speeches on the issue. In part, this is the natural advantage of incumbency — governments can actually do things. But the challenge

Luciana Berger is a frequent speaker at this year’s conference and her creed is simple: tax energy use to tackle climate change. But, journey along the Mersey, from the glamorous fringe events held on Liverpool’s well rejuvenated quays to the post-industrial wasteland that lies beyond and you discover a different breed of Labour MP. ‘Is the green economy a threat to growth?’ asked Ellesmere MP, Andrew Miller at a seminar earlier this afternoon. Along with his panel – comprised of representatives from the chemical industry, the unions and of Michael Connarty, the MP for East Falkirk and a long-term advocate of the chemical industry – he reached the following conclusion: the current incarnation

Chris Huhne can always be guaranteed to grate. Several Conservatives have cracked wry smiles at the energy secretary’s comments about the “Tory Tea Party tendency”. Mark Pritchard quipped that plenty of senior Lib Dems would soon be at leisure to throw their own tea parties and John Redwood dismissed Huhne’s cant as conference high-jinks. Redwood went on to challenge Huhne’s policies. Speaking to Sky News, he said he was “happy to hear ideas” about “promoting more competition”, pointing out that competition might reduce prices. Then he added that Huhne “has also got to understand it is his policies that are driving costs of electricity up in Britain because we are

The list of things that will be Big Politics when Parliament returns from its summer break is growing all the time: growth, the post-riot clean-up, the undeserving rich, multiple squeezes, and so on. But few will have has much everyday resonance as another item on the list: rising energy prices. This has been a problem for some time, of course, thanks to a toxic combination of trickle-down green measures, oil price spikes, and financial effrontery from the energy companies. But it looks only to get worse. This morning’s Telegraph reports on an internal Downing Street document — entitled “Impact of our energy and climate policies on consumer energy bills” —

One of the big political issues of the autumn is going to be energy bills. Among Tory MPs, there’s mounting concern that the coalition’s green policies are driving up the price of energy rather than helping to bring it down. They fear that this is both acting as a drag on the economy and adding to the squeeze on family budgets. So, today’s story in The Times about how a carbon trading scheme—started under the last government—has led to households being charged, on average, £120 more than they should have been in utility bills is going to turn up the political heat on this subject. The paper alleges that: “Energy

Chris Huhne was on the Andrew Marr show this morning. As you might expect on a day when the Sunday Telegraph broke the news that fuel bills will boom by 30 per cent as a result of green taxes, the Energy Secretary was asked to ruminate at length on all matters Murdoch. Eventually, though, Huhne had to answer searching questions pertaining to his brief. Confronted with the Sunday Telegraph’s story, Huhne described it as ‘nonsense’ because it did not take potential savings into account. Huhne also pledged to introduce more competition to shatter the grip that the ‘Big Six’ utility companies have on 90 per cent of the UK’s energy market. Greater

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the deleterious effects of political consensus on energy policy. A good example of this has emerged today. According to Politics Home, Luciana Berger and Caroline Lucas are seeking an amendment to the Green Deal to impose a target for domestic carbon reduction. A number of salient points emerge from this. First, it’s a fine instance of the obsession with targets; itself an indication that this area of policy is largely a top down initiative – driven by targets, taxes and penalties. The Green Deal, as it currently stands, is one of the few areas that put incentive before directive. The idea was

What do the TUC, heavy industry and the European Commission have in common? This is not the start of a bad joke; the answer is that they all oppose the government’s energy policy. Ten days ago, Tata (formerly British Steel) announced that it was to cut more than 1,500 jobs at plants in Scunthorpe and on Teeside. The directors later confirmed that their decision was influenced, in part, by the introduction of a costly carbon floor price at the last Budget. The floor price, which exists on top of levies imposed by the EU, has increased the burden of taxation on energy consumption to subsidise renewable energy research. In last week’s

George Monbiot is undergoing an astounding and very public transformation. Last week he overcame the habit of a lifetime and fully endorsed nuclear power as a safe energy source. He went further this week, attacking the anti-nuclear movement for perpetuating lies and ignoring the consensus around scientific facts. He levels special criticism at the allegedly lax scholarship of Dr Helen Caldicott, a decorated primate of the anti-nuclear communion.  He also debunks the myths surrounding the disaster at Chernobyl and laments that campaigners have abused that tragedy by exaggerating its consequences. Monbiot’s tone is neither arch nor righteous. Rather, he’s disappointed and the piece has a dignified poignancy. He concludes: