Energy

Helge Lund was widely expected to go into domestic politics when he ended his successful tenure as head of Statoil, the Norwegian state oil and gas company. Instead, he was hired to run BG Group, the troubled former exploration arm of British Gas, but on a promise of such ludicrously rich terms — up to ten times his Statoil salary — that shareholders, the media and Vince Cable howled in protest. An embarrassed BG board had to scale back the offer, though it remained pretty fat and as I wrote at the time, ‘no mention of Lund, however good he turns out to be, will ever omit a jibe at

With every policy launch during an election campaign, it is worth asking why a party has chosen that policy and why it is launching it on that particular day. This is generally because answering those questions helps you work out what message a party is trying to send and whether they are on the defensive or offensive. But today it is worth asking this question simply because it would be nice to get an answer: why have the Tories launched two completely unconnected policies which don’t sound very Toryish on the same day? One of these policies is the freezing of rail fares, which begs the question, why did the Tories expend so

For the best part of half a century Greenpeace’s constant campaigning on environmental issues has been an almost unmitigated success. Its effectiveness has brought it both astonishing wealth and almost unimpeded access to decision-makers. During this time, it has had what amounts to a free pass from the media, its claims and methods rarely questioned by credulous environmental correspondents. But are the wheels finally coming off? Looking back over the last few years it’s easy to get that impression: an organisation that once seemed untouchable has found itself having to answer some very sharp questions about the way it behaves and operates. As far back as 2010, Gene Hashmi, Greenpeace’s

The ‘windfall tax’, a concept introduced in the UK by the Blair government, is by definition a one-off seizure of revenue from a profitable industry, to fund an invariably unprofitable but popular project. It has been justified as putting ‘right a bad deal’ on the excesses of profits of unpopular industries. Between 1997 and 1998, Gordon Brown raised £5 billion from privatised utility companies to fund the Welfare-to-Work Programme. Today we have face another well-intentioned policy initiative, of ensuring every NHS patient is guaranteed a cancer test within 7 days, supposedly to be funded by a windfall tax on tobacco companies. Labour’s incoherent economic policy is enough to challenge whether

George Osborne has been in retail mode this morning, selling his pension reforms and explaining how pensioners can unlock their life’s savings. The Chancellor has said that the Treasury will work with the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Age UK and other organisations to provide pensioners with the best possible impartial guidance to transform their retirement. Interested parties can consult the Treasury for more details. listen to ‘Osborne: Russia sanctions would be an ‘economic hit’ for the UK’ on Audioboo Osborne went on to add that this was what the pension reforms are ‘all about’. More cynical voices might, however, refer to Allister Heath’s article in this morning’s Telegraph, which says: ‘Despite

‘Energy is the single biggest issue facing Jean-Claude Juncker,’ remarked a seasoned Eurocrat to me earlier this week. Europe’s energy infrastructure is decrepit and insular. Rates of cross-border interconnection, for example, remain very low – at just 8 per cent of their production capacity on average across the union according to the FT. The Commission’s 2030 energy package aims to raise the average rate of interconnection to 15 per cent — part of a string of targets designed to complete the single market in energy. Alas, it’s going to take more than a target or two. The level of investment required is enormous (more than 1 trillion euros by the Commission’s

The surface of the sea is a hostile and unforgiving place. Although it covers 71 per cent of the planet, nothing much bigger than a speck lives there. Obviously, lots of slimy and scaly things swim around beneath the surface — but on the very top, pretty much zilch. Mother Nature has found niches for life in the desert, the Arctic and deep underground but, after 4.5 billion years of trying, she is passing on the surface of the sea, thanks all the same. Now you would think that this very long experiment in trying to evolve life in a hostile environment would act as some kind of hint to

‘I don’t know why energy companies invest in Britain,’ said a former energy minister to me a couple of weeks ago. He was referring to the lack of progress on shale exploration (more of which later), but he might easily have been talking about the politicisation of energy prices. In case you haven’t heard, Ofgem, the energy regulator, has written to the Big Six energy firms to ask them to explain why the fall in wholesale prices over the past 12 months has not been passed on to the consumer. Another political row has broken out, with politicians on all sides claiming that the energy market is dysfunctional. They have cause to