Tories committ to nuclear and renewable energy

The Conservatives have unveiled their Green Paper on energy, called 'Rebuilding Security, Conservative Energy Policy For an Uncertain World'.

As with all major political announcements Curtin&Co has undertaken to produce a full analysis of this for our clients, a version of which is on our website. We have noted several common themes of Conservative policy coming out of this paper, which will form the manifesto for the Tories at the next general election.

The 'localism' theme is prominent, but only when referring to renewable energy. On-shore windfarms will be supported by a new Conservative government and local authorities will be encouraged to embrace this technology by retaining the business rates for each turbine developed for six years. Wind energy providers will also be obliged to provide subsidised energy for those living close to a wind farm, though this doesn't appear in much detail (probably because preparing such a subsidy is pretty much impossible at the moment).

But the localism theme stalls somewhat when big infrastructure issues are concerned. The Infrastructure Planning Commission, of who's deputy chairman was the guest speaker at our December Christmas event in London, will be predictably abolished. That may be bad news for the graphic designers and webmsters preparing the IPC's livery and corporate image, but the expertise of the IPC will be retained. It appears that far from trusting local authorities to make their own decisions on clean coal/carbon capture power plants and nuclear facilities these major decisions will still be made centrally, albeit not by an unelected quango but by the Planning Inspectorate.

Other highlights, such as creating a Green Investment Bank, are fairly apolitical in their nature. The Chancellor announced such a policy in yesterday's budget, so we can be assured that whoever wins the election will focus on this, though doubtless the detail will be different between the major parties.

I suppose the big talking point about this paper is how determined the Tories are about nuclear power. Given that there is an election in the offing and the form of energy generation is almost universally despised amongst green pressure groups it is nice to see such a commitment. Whether this outbreak of decisiveness will cost the party any seats and, perhaps, even rob them of an overall majority is anyones guess.