Some advice for the new Energy and Climate Change Minister

Gordon Brown’s reshuffle created a lot of headlines, mainly because he brought Mr Mandelson back into the Government fold, but the most important thing he announced was to create a Department of Energy and Climate Change and point the Secretary of State – in this case Ed Miliband – as a Minister with cabinet rank.

For twenty of thirty years energy policy has been divided between several government departments and the energy minister was not of cabinet rank; indeed energy was about as low on the government agenda as climate change.

Companies like Genersys have had to deal with regulations and incentive and subsidy schemes created by several government departments. The policy was disjointed and illogical and at times had a nightmare quality about it, if you ran a business in the renewable energy field. I hope that things will now improve.

Energy is clearly the lifeblood of any country. In effect the Government left energy to the energy markets, and only added some policy at the edges of the energy companies’ business. That meant that even government policies on issues like fuel poverty were at the mercy of the markets rather than being decided by the government.

Other important aspects of energy – energy security for the United Kingdom as a nation was ignored for far too long. In addition we had virtually a meaningless series of measures to fight climate change, virtually all of which revolve around the same kind of complex artificial market schemes no one understands that have brought banking to its knees.

Of course the absurdity of having no energy minister and no environment minister of cabinet rank lasted far longer than it should have lasted, but having said that we should give credit to Mr Brown for at last tackling the structural deficiencies that made energy policy and climate change policy so poorly handled for far too long. At least now the government has given itself and the country a sporting chance of getting things right.

Mr Miliband will have his work cut out, though, to get things on track so that the United Kingdom can secure its future energy with far fewer emissions than now. I would offer him some advice.

1.    Get some good advisors; the people who advised the various government departments have not provided good advice so far; if they had the problems that you are now facing Mr Miliband, would be fewer and less serious.

2.    Do not put your faith in the clean development mechanism, carbon trading or similar schemes. It is very simple; you have to find ways that we (a) use less energy and (b) generate as much energy as we can of our own and that means energy savings and renewables.

3.    Avoid large expensive projects no matter what they promise. They take too long and will not be as effective as you are told they will be. Invest in microgeneration. It works by creating many millions of permanent savings. It will not be a grandiose project but the legacy will be far longer lasting.

4.    Please, Mr Miliband; no more big consultations. You do not need to consult anymore; you need to make hard decisions. Consulting will make it harder for you to make hard decisions, not easier.

5.    Be strong; many of the measures that you must undertake will be opposed by the Treasury on grounds of cost. Polish your economic arguments; you can read the Stern Report (does anyone read it anymore) for some cutting edge arguments to vanquish the Treasury.

6.    Take a long term view. I know, Mr Miliband that this is hard advice for any politician to follow but in the field of energy and climate change you must take a long term view and plan for the long term. A week may be a long time in politics but energy and climate change operate over far longer intervals and you must plan accordingly.

Finally, I hope that the new department will not waaste any money of designing a logo. Any doodle will do. Spend the millions on soalr panels instead.

I wish Mr Miliband the best in his new post. I hope that he will not disappoint us or let us down.