After a delay of three months, the Conservatives today finally launched their energy manifesto: ‘Rebuilding Security; Conservative Energy Policy for an Uncertain World’.
It reconfirms the Conservatives’ committments to new nuclear (number 6 on their list of 12), as well as Carbon Capture Storage (CCS), a reform to the Climate Change Levy and the ‘promotion’ of renewables.
In the paper, Conservative Leader David Cameron claims that Labour’s energy policy is ‘out of date’ and that ‘in thirteen years of Labour government, Ministers have consistently ducked the task of reform’.
Today’s paper has been branded a ‘companion paper’ to The Low Carbon Economy, the Tories’ vision for a clean energy future which was launched by Cameron and his Shadow Energy Secretary Greg Clark MP last year. The emphasis on Rebuilding Security is on the reliability and resilience of the UK’s energy systems over the coming decades.
In the paper, the Conservatives highlight 12 key challenges:
- Ensure that Britain has a clear, consistent and stable energy policy
- Establish a capacity guarantee in the electricity market
- Establish a security guarantee for gas supply
- Reform the Climate Change Levy to provide a floor price for carbon
- Operate a streamlined planning process for large infrastructure investments
- Facilitate nuclear power
- Accelerate the demonstration of carbon capture and storage
- Promote renewable energy
- Revolutionise supply and demand by building an energy internet
- Reduce demand by offering every household a Green Deal on energy efficiency
- Electrify transport to reduce dependence on oil
- Create a Green Investment Bank
Within this, the Conservatives have highlighted four overall themes:
Security – ‘Britain must be able to count on, today and in the future, reliable supplies of energy for electricity, heating and transport’.
Sustainability – ‘Our wellbeing depends on a healthy environment. In extracting, generating and using energy we must safeguard the ecosystems we rely on’.
Economy – ‘Energy is a necessity of daily life for consumers and business. We want it to be abundant and affordable’.
Opportunity – ‘Historically, energy has been a sector of British industrial and commercial strength. We want to develop and deploy those strengths to create new wealth for the country’.
Commenting for the Government, Lord Hunt, the energy minister, said: “After repeated false starts the Tories’ long overdue so-called policy statement amounts to little more than a hotchpotch of tinkering with the energy market. The Tories would create uncertainty, threaten investment and would push up prices. Not only can the Tories not be trusted to tackle climate change, they put our energy security at risk too.”
The Liberal Democrat Shadow Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Simon Hughes MP said:
“Blindly pledging to build a new nuclear plant every 18 months is a recipe for disaster.
“Nuclear power has always required huge amounts of public money and David Cameron’s signal that the Tories are ready to turn on the taps of taxpayer support risks billions that we simply can’t afford.
“Nuclear energy is not clean energy. A new generation of nuclear power stations would leave us with a legacy of deadly radioactive waste that will take hundreds of years and billions of pounds to clean up.
“Today’s announcement has shown us yet again that for all of Cameron’s posturing, the Tories can’t be trusted to deliver on the environment.”
The paper does not contain any surprises. The main focus for any Government over the medium to long term was always going to be nuclear, and here there is little to separate Labour from the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats remain opposed to new nuclear, as Simon Hughes made clear from his reaction, above.
