The Real Cost of Energy

“Vote blue, go green” we were told by David Cameron after he became Conservative leader – at the height of an era in which concern for the sustainability of the planet was fashionable, and in which the country could afford to put its money where its mouth was.

Now, times are tougher, people’s pockets are shrinking… and, of course, politicians are pandering to those whims instead. Today the Prime Minister told the House of Commons – to the audible surprise of even many in his own party – that he wanted to “roll back some of the green regulations and charges that are putting up bills”.

This echoes a similar pledge by Nicola Sturgeon on Friday, who said that an SNP government of an independent Scotland would deliver “a real and lasting cut, not a short-term fix” by removing environmental levies from energy bills (that these would instead have to be paid out of general taxation attracted strangely less attention at the conference).

Of course, these are not unilateral changes in policy; they reflect shifting attitudes in society. Hence the unity of purpose that saw Mr Cameron posing with huskies for our newspapers while Ed Miliband was adding green taxes to our energy bills is now being shown as the same two rivals fall over themselves in trying to demonstrate that they really are on our side.

Meanwhile at Grangemouth, the fight to save one of Scotland’s most significant industrial sites – and one of the largest remaining relics of 20th-century energy production – suffered a major blow when the owners, citing massive losses and employees’ unwillingness to compromise, announced that they were closing the petrochemical plant that employs 800 people.

The decision could have huge implications for the UK’s (especially Scotland’s) energy security – the refinery supplies 70% of the fuel used north of the border and also contributes to stocks elsewhere. The closure of such a significant resource is likely to increase our dependence on fuel imported from Europe and the US.

It is also another reminder of the urgent need to invest meaningfully in other, more sustainable forms of production. The current model of subsidies is an unworkable, patchwork solution that relies on a ‘base’ level of continued supply from increasingly volatile sources.

Yet at what is a crunch time for decision-making on this issue, the politicians are bogged down in arguments over whose fault it is, and who would save households more money. The debate has been distorted ever since Mr Miliband launched his populist price-fixing policy, with the government preoccupied in giving us several (very valid) reasons why we shouldn’t be fooled.

But whatever the outcome, it will change nothing about the way we manage our energy supply. Part of the problem is that dire warnings about the uncertain future are so routinely hijacked by sensationalist headlines about ‘the lights going out’ as to be dismissed by those who refuse to believe that the prospects could ever be allowed to get so grim.

And therein lies the political problem – no government will ever admit (even implicitly) that urgent action is needed, for fear of being blamed for creating the situation in the first place.

But the power is in governments’ hands – not by dictating energy firms' business model, but by incentivising a change of priorities, for the good of their own future, as well as the country’s. That way, people like those being abandoned at Grangemouth will not be betrayed by their employers who told them they had a career in an industry with no future.

It’s the sort of predicament that makes politics so infuriating yet so compelling.