Energy

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Wind and bias, and the Scots at war

Caution over wind Sir: While the broadcast media have assailed their audiences with simplistic yet blanket coverage of the floods crisis, it behoves Christopher Booker to provide a long overdue critical perspective of the Environmental Agency (‘Sunk!’, 15 February). The two main tenets of his article have been ignored by most, if not all, other journalists. With something approaching delicious irony we are then treated in the same issue to a self-serving missive from the Renewables UK boxwallah Jennifer Weber (Letters, 15 February). Replete (as one would expect from an organisation that previously went under the name British Wind Energy Association) with dismissive assertions and bogus statistics, Weber’s letter exemplifies the

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Fears for Scotland, and John Cornwell answers Melanie McDonagh

Save our Scotland Sir: Matthew Parris is quite right to praise Lord Lang’s speech in the Lords on Scottish independence 9 (‘The End of Britain’, 8 February) and there were other notable contributions, especially from Lord Kerr, on the European dimension, and Lord Robertson, the former secretary-general of Nato. But is anyone listening? The debate got virtually no coverage in the Scottish editions — and I suspect even less in the English ones. Meanwhile the SNP publicity machine rolls on here and is now promising an annual ‘Indy bonus’ of £600 for every man, woman and child in Scotland, exceeding the £500 threshold at which (as Alex Massie pointed out in

Thursday

Andrew Montford

David Cameron is dangerously complacent on shale gas regulation

Late on Tuesday afternoon, and within minutes of each other, two separate hearings in the Palace of Westminster examined the prospects for shale gas in the UK. In the upper house, the Economic Affairs Committee was taking evidence from Chris Wright, the straight-talking boss of an American shale gas company. Wright, a boyish forty-something, gave their lordships a crash course in shale gas development, explaining the approach companies like his took in order to get gas out of the ground. Because every shale well is different, he said, shale companies have to experiment a bit, trying out different fracking recipes and techniques until they find one that works for them.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Fracking incentives ‘pathetic’ and ‘insulting’, Tory MP warns

Many plaudits this morning for ministers such as Michael Fallon who have catalysed the government’s push ahead with fracking. The only question, though, is whether enthusiasm in Whitehall will translate into enthusiasm in local communities. Ministers are pointing to a change in the incentives for communities which means they can now keep 100 per cent of business rates from extraction sites. But it certainly hasn’t impressed Ben Wallace, the Tory MP for Wyre and Preston North, who is a vocal spokesman for the group of MPs whose constituencies sit on the Bowland Shale. Wallace tells me: ‘What they are offering us today – an extra £850,000 of business rates is pathetic,

Monday

Ross Clark

The Climate Change Act will do untold damage to British industry

‘A very good deal for Britain,’ is how Ed Davey described the contract with EDF and Chinese backers to build a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset, when it was signed back in October. Yesterday, it became clear just how wrong the energy secretary was when Ineos chief Jim Ratcliffe revealed on the BBC that his company has just agreed a similar deal to build a nuclear plant in France – but at a strike price of 45 Euros (£37.94) per MWh rather than the £92.50 per MWh which the government committed the consumer to paying for energy from Hinkley Point. Think of the very worse PFI

Saturday

Ross Clark

Ed Davey’s energy policy claims another victim

At last week’s Spectator energy conference Michael Fallon appeared to steer government policy away from green ideology and in a more business and consumer-friendly direction.   But there was to  be a nasty sting in the tail.   Shortly afterwards Ed Davey’s Department for Energy and Climate Change  changed the rules on something called Final Investment Decision (FID) enabling.   The direct result is that the UK could lose a Yorkshire power station which is responsible for generating 4% of the country’s electricity.    Given that the reserve margin between maximum generating output and peak demand is projected to fall to just 2 per cent in the winter of 2015/16,

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

David Cameron on tax, coalition, ‘green crap’ and Team Nigella

It’s 9.30 a.m. on a Friday and David Cameron is about to head for his Oxfordshire constituency and work from home. This is precisely the habit that his Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is trying to beat out of the civil service, but the Prime Minister has a reasonable claim to some downtime. In the past five days he has met 150 businessmen and toured four Chinese cities. This morning, he has paid a visit to Tech City, London’s answer to Silicon Valley, and travelled to South Africa House to pass on his condolences following Nelson Mandela’s death. His last appointment, which will last for as long as it takes

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 5 December 2013

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that average energy bills would be brought £50 lower through government intervention to reduce the obligation of energy companies to subsidise insulation. The government also said it would cut subsidies for onshore wind turbines and solar energy, and increase those for offshore wind farms. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that new arrivals from Bulgaria or Romania found to be begging or sleeping rough would be thrown out of the country and barred from returning for a year, unless they had a job. He then flew to China to further British trade. A bridge across the Thames from Temple to the

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Power struggle

It is ‘immoral’, asserted Michael Fallon at this week’s Spectator energy conference, to force basic-rate taxpayers to subsidise wealthy landowners’ wind turbines and the solar panels of well-off homeowners. It is hard to remember the last time a minister was so frank about something which had been government policy until a few hours earlier. As a result of changes announced by the government this week, consumers will save £50 a year compared with what their bills would have been. The cost of supporting energy bills for the poor will be shifted from energy bills to general taxation, and the obligation on energy companies to subsidise home insulation will be watered

Tuesday

Constance Watson

Fracking debate: ‘Let’s peek into this pandora’s box’

At last night’s Spectator debate, the audience voted dramatically in favour of the motion Let’s Get Fracking! Despite impassioned speeches from Green party leader Natalie Bennett, Greenpeace’s Joss Garman, and Craig Bennett from Friends of the Earth, the crowd sided with Conservative MPs Peter Lilley and John Redwood and the energy consultant Nick Grealy, who said that it’s time for Britain to ‘peek into this Pandora’s box’ and at least explore the possibilities of shale gas. Peter Lilley opened the debate with a joke at Chris Huhne’s expense: ‘in my view he should have been jailed not for driving too fast but for driving the development of shale gas too slowly’. He went

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Fallon: green energy isn’t the government’s energy priority

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

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Caroline Flint and Ed Davey clash over who cares most about consumers

One of the Conservatives’ great victories in government has been to portray the party as on the side of consumers against behemoth and sometimes inefficient producers. Take education, where Michael Gove has set to tackling the ‘Blob’ of the education establishment on behalf of parents who want real choice over their children’s education. Or the NHS, where Jeremy Hunt has styled himself as the patients’ champion, standing up to a resistant NHS establishment on standards of care. But this isn’t the case on every front. Today’s Commons statement on energy bills by Ed Davey underlined the struggle the Coalition faces in presenting a convincing case for being a consumer champion

Ross Clark Ross Clark

We can reduce carbon emissions, but we can’t afford Labour’s targets

If Britain is to meet its self-imposed carbon-reduction targets it means the end of coal by 2030. Things aren’t looking much brighter for the coalition. The deep fissure between Liberal Democrat-driven green policy and Conservative-driven business policy has become clear at the Spectator Energy Conference today. Ed Davey has bunked off, with his office saying he is in China. Actually he is preparing for this afternoon’s announcement in the Commons, and energy minister Michael Fallon has been sent instead. Both halves of the coalition have rapidly stitched up a deal to cut energy bills by £50. But the Lib Dems won’t tolerate a reversal of decarbonisation targets. That makes a sensible energy policy impossible. As Peter Atherton of Liberium Capital

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Ed Davey focuses fire on Labour – for now

Of all the ministers involved in the Coalition negotiations over energy bills, Ed Davey has had quite the worst experience. He has had to water down his conference bullishness about standing up to the Tories to a sort of amiable plea that the Lib Dems really are keeping the Coalition green. When his departmental junior Michael Fallon won ‘Minister of the Year’ at the Spectator awards this year, one of the judges observed that he had ‘kneecapped Ed Davey’. In his interview on Today this morning, Davey went for Labour, and dodged suggestions that he and his party had lost out. As James reported yesterday, there has been a fair

Sunday

James Forsyth

Osborne wants to talk about ‘the responsible recovery’ but energy bills are still Topic A

In the minds of government strategists, the autumn statement is the moment when the coalition gets to turn the conversation back to the broader economy and away from Ed Miliband’s focus on the cost of living. But the first five minutes of George Osborne’s pre-statement interview with Andrew Marr were dominated by the action the government is taking in response to Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy bills. The problem for the coalition on energy bills is that the £50 it is taking off bills now might well not be enough to stop bills rising next year. If household bills go up again in 2014, Miliband’s price freeze is going to

Friday

Isabel Hardman

No 10: the government has not asked for a price freeze

If today’s energy bills confusion is an example of how the government plants stories, it really is a poor gardener of news. Number 10 this morning denied that ministers had asked the energy companies for a price freeze, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying: ‘The government has not asked for a price freeze’ and added that ‘people should wait for the Autumn Statement when we will spell out our plans to roll back the impact of levies on people’s energy bills’. The spokesman explained that the government will be focusing on the need for more competition through the annual competition review and rolling back the levies and charges on energy

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Latest Tory energy stance gives ground to Labour

One of the techniques that horror writers employ to make their novels as frightening as possible is to avoid describing their monster in any great detail. Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and by and large it will be your own imagination filling in the details of Victor Frankenstein’s creation as the creature lumbers out of its inventor’s room and into the streets of Ingolstadt. Our imaginations frighten us far more than authors can. The same elision is at work in politics, except the authors aren’t doing themselves any favours. The Tories have a habit of staying very quiet indeed on a social problem, whether it be payday loans or something else

Thursday

The Spectator

Our enemy is not global warming. In Britain, people are dying of the cold

Fanciful predictions of all the deaths that will result from climate change, decades into the future, are regularly thrown into public debate. Less attention has been given to a real statistic from the here and now, released by the Office of National Statistics this week, which shows the effects of one of the policies designed to tackle climate change: high energy prices. It emerged this week that there were 31,000 ‘excess’ deaths in England and Wales last winter, almost a third more than the previous year. Almost all were, in effect, British pensioners who died of the cold. It’s odd: Britain is a rich country with a massive welfare state

Friday

Guy Newey

Renewable costs on bills to double due to European target

As officials try to meet the Prime Minister’s promise to roll back the ‘green levies’ and cut the ‘green crap’, lots of attention has focused on the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), the Coalition’s flagship energy efficiency policy. Its aim is to improve the state of the UK’s woeful housing stock and to reduce the amount of heating people use. The scheme is far from perfect. It offers too many subsidies to expensive measures like solid wall insulation, rather than much cheaper ones, such as loft insulation. Also, it has yet to show support for charity incentives that show people how to use less energy. But the general ambition is right. The

Thursday

Will Straw

Why the Right is wrong about ‘the green crap’

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,