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Step one would be to prevent ministers talking about the extra power bills it is our painful duty to pay and start offering an immediate future of lower energy costs. The need is to associate a greener future not with still higher gas and electricity bills, or with dubious payback calculations decades ahead, but with lower utility bills now. Step two is to let $100 oil do the "taxing" and incentivising. No further green consumer taxes - over and above the already ferocious ones on petrol - are required. The driving factor is that this time (as opposed to experience in the 1980s) oil will stay expensive. The private sector will research, develop and deliver the biofuels that make commercial and environmental sense. The same goes for wind farms, for which the UK consumer is paying some of the highest subsidies in Europe on their already inflated electricity bills - with questionable results. Markets will filter out the unprofitable wind projects and leave the few good ones to make money. The same goes for new nuclear power. Press the nuclear industry to compete and deliver even safer plants, built more quickly and with less toxic waste, and it will do so - maybe with a bit of planning help but without levies on the already overlevied consumer. Step three - probably the least popular in some circles - is to face the fact that the multiple opportunities for innovation and development in low and clean energy are going to come from private sector technology and privately financed research. Government-funded research will make the wrong choices and crowd out the market winners.
Step two is to let $100 oil do the "taxing" and incentivising. No further green consumer taxes - over and above the already ferocious ones on petrol - are required. The driving factor is that this time (as opposed to experience in the 1980s) oil will stay expensive. The private sector will research, develop and deliver the biofuels that make commercial and environmental sense.
The same goes for wind farms, for which the UK consumer is paying some of the highest subsidies in Europe on their already inflated electricity bills - with questionable results. Markets will filter out the unprofitable wind projects and leave the few good ones to make money. The same goes for new nuclear power. Press the nuclear industry to compete and deliver even safer plants, built more quickly and with less toxic waste, and it will do so - maybe with a bit of planning help but without levies on the already overlevied consumer.
Step three - probably the least popular in some circles - is to face the fact that the multiple opportunities for innovation and development in low and clean energy are going to come from private sector technology and privately financed research. Government-funded research will make the wrong choices and crowd out the market winners.
How do you define "biofuels that make environmental sense" and "safer nuclear plants" without government decisions? In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
The private sector will research, develop and deliver the biofuels that make commercial and environmental sense.
Cellulosic ethanol, this kind of stuff. Not really there. The great issue is how to avoid competition against food production in terms of products (the corn abomination) or land use without regulation? How do you avoid destroying primary forests in 3rd world countries? But who cares? The Market(TM) will provide as it always does.
The same goes for new nuclear power. Press the nuclear industry to compete and deliver even safer plants, built more quickly and with less toxic waste, and it will do so - maybe with a bit of planning help but without levies on the already overlevied consumer.
This one is fairly easy. Merchant plants. That's the worst way of developing nuclear power and the only model that gives an incentive to the owner to take undue risks with the plant as it cannot average unplanned outages over multiple plants. Tory efficiency at its best. The Market(TM) will provide as it always does.
That being said, the notion that nuclear plants require or deserve special subsidies is a canard and the Tories are correct in that sense.
The Market(TM) will provide as it always does. The Market(TM) doesn't care about the realities of R&D and engineering. The Market(TM) creates its own reality.
The Market(TM) is always right. Facts, selfish little bastards. They don't even care about your feelings.
