thetorydiary

Three-quarters of Tory members believe that energy prices are likely to be a bigger political issue by the time of the next General election than climate change according to a ConservativeHome survey. Just 10% think climate change will weigh more heavily on voters' minds.

Speaking at a meeting of centre right think tanks and campaigners yesterday, Matt Sinclair of The TaxPayers' Alliance warned that voters would be furious if their energy bills rise because of green measures at the same time that their pay is being squeezed and their taxes rising.

At the same meeting Lord Lawson was very upbeat about the prospects of climate change sceptics prevailing. There is no way he said that a nation like India, with 30% of its population lacking any electricity, will not increase its energy usage in the years ahead. He also said that it would be too expensive for them to use renewable fuels. Their priority - rightly - would be to increase the health and welfare of their own people.

In this global context a Conservative government needs to be very careful about increasing the energy bills of UK consumers without any hope of reducing the 'global carbon footprint'.

The results are summarised below alongside two results on CCTV and smoking in private clubs:

10.45am update:

The party has revealed that aside from the Mayor of London, the following fourteen authorities have agreed to pilot the scheme being called the "Green Deal": Broadland, East Sussex, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hyndburn, Kensington & Chelsea, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Norfolk, North Tyneside, South Holland, Suffolk, Westminster, and West Sussex.

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David Cameron has given an interview which is splashed across the front page of this morning's Guardian to coincide with Gordon Brown's arrival at the Copenhagen summit (for which he is missing today's PMQs, the last before Christmas).

The Tory leader is quick to warn politicians against lecturing people on climate change or seemingly leaving themselves open to charges of hypocrisy since they are "in danger of starting to lose people":

"If the environmental agenda becomes limited to well-suited politicians stepping out of aeroplanes on to tarmacs, telling people how to live their lives and sounding like everyone else will just have to sit in a darkened room, wearing woollies with the lights turned off and the heating down, we are not going to get anywhere.

"People do not like being lectured. You have to take people with you, and the way to do that is to connect individual behaviour and rewards, and help people see the advantages of going green. We have to have carrots as well as sticks."

He goes on to announce a new Conservative policy which would see major retailers and energy firms help people "green" their homes.

Around six million households would get access to up to £6,500 worth of energy efficiency measures under the partnership scheme, which would see companies such as Tesco and Marks & Spencer lagging lofts and insulating walls. The resulting savings in electricity bills would then be shared with householders over a minimum 15 to 20 years.

I regard myself as a climate change realist. I'm unconvinced by the evidence for man-made global warming and my suspicions have only grown this week following the attempts by East Anglian scientists to suppress dissent. I describe myself as a realist because I don't think politicians have the will to combat climate change even if combating it was possible. Just think about Kyoto. Kyoto was only 1/40th of what was necessary to combat climate change and many western countries still failed to meet their targets. Insofar as some succeeded in meeting their targets they often did so by exporting industrial capacity to other parts of the world. They failed to meet promises to fund developing nations as those nations adjusted to climate change.

In a world where political energy is as finite as some fuel supplies I'd rather our political leaders spent their time on lifting trade barriers, tackling malaria and guaranteeing clean water to poor nations. In that regard I'm what might be called 'a Lomborgite'. If the climate is changing our best hope is that the developing world gets a lot richer and can afford to mitigate the consequences.

What annoys me about some climate change sceptics, however, is that they are unwilling to consider measures that are advanced by politicians that would cut emissions but are also entirely justifiable on other grounds.  The best recent example was the Tory pledge to reduce household energy bills with an innovative scheme to improve home insulation.  It was a win, win, win policy. It cut bills. It created jobs. And, yes, it reduced carbon emissions. Some commenters below this thread weren't even willing to consider the virtues of the policy because it had a climate change label. That's not sensible.

Since Greg Clark MP became Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change he has been careful to develop policies that are justifiable on other grounds than climate change alone. (1) Combating general forms of pollution, (2) cutting energy bills, (3) reducing dependence on energy imports from rogue regimes and (4) increasing the diversity of our overall energy supply all feature in Greg Clark's environmentalism.  Let's try and have a more mature discussion about the environment and energy and not close our brains whenever the two words 'climate change' are mentioned. I'll support any 'green measure' that makes significant contributions to those other four policy goals.

Tim Montgomerie

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Greg Clark MP, has just written an article for ConservativeHome reviewing this week's big push by seven shadow cabinet ministers on the environment. Greg writes about the Conservative Party's "positive environmentalism" and concludes:

"If our homes are more energy efficient they can be warmer, cheaper and less damaging to the environment.  If we can be whisked from the centre of London to the centre of Manchester by high speed electric train, why would we want to fly? ...If we can act quickly to secure in a leading role for Britain in the low carbon economy towards which the world is converting, it can be a motor of job creation."

Read his full piece.

In advance of the Copenhagen summit on climate change George Osborne will today spearhead renewed attempts by the Tory leadership to insist that the party remains committed to deeper and deeper environmentalism. Writing in The Independent the Shadow Chancellor notes a coordinated green offensive by him and other top colleagues:

"This week, I'm one of four Conservative Shadow Cabinet ministers making speeches on climate change, talking about how we will take action to cut emissions and green our economy. This unprecedented series of speeches is a powerful demonstration that our commitment to the environment is as strong as ever."

At the beginning of the Cameron leadership the green issue was dominant in the party's decontamination strategy. Since then 'green conservatism' has taken second place to 'gentler conservatism' as the party leadership invested more and more time in social justice. The green message has been renewed, however, by Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Greg Clark. Alongside Michael Gove he is seen as the most intellectually able of his generation.

The energy efficiency initiative for homes, opposition to a third runway at Heathrow and support for high speed rail have been the most important signs of green Toryism up until now. George Osborne will set out more steps today including a warning to Whitehall departments that they will forfeit funding if they do not cut emissions by 10% within one year.

ConHome has already quick-fired the ten main stories from last week's party Conference plus David Cameron's compassionate agenda and George Osborne's public spending crackdown. Each day this week we'll be reviewing other big stories to emerge from the Manchester Party Conference that we didn't cover adequately in a very busy last week. We started with education yesterday and turn to the environment today.

You do not have to sign up to the full climate change agenda to sign up to Greg Clark MP's policy on home energy efficiency.  It's a sensible money-saving policy and it's a wonder that it has never been proposed before.

The Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change announced his 'Green Deal' last week and it was given a very warm welcome by Geoffrey Lean over at The Telegraph:

"It got precious little publicity, but the Tories confirmed a truly radical policy at their conference in Manchester this week.  Shadow energy and climate change minister, Greg Clark, announced that a Conservative government would make £6,500 available to every household in the country to take energy saving measures. The money would be provided upfront, and householders would only have to pay back a proportion of what they saved on their energy bills each year. It would attack the biggest single source of carbon dioxide; heating and powering homes is responsible for some 27 per cent of Britain’s emissions. And the Tories reckon that it will create a £2.5 billion a year industry providing up to 70,000 skilled jobs."

The £6,500 maximum energy efficiency loan wouldn't actually come from the public purse but - explains Charles Glover at The Times - from the companies that undertake the home improvement work.

Tim Montgomerie

12.15pm update: Greg Clark has blogged about today's story here.

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Not so long ago, on one of the many occasions on which the departmental structures of Whitehall have been tinkered with, Gordon Brown created the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

Yet on the basis of most of what comes out of the department and its Secretary of State, Ed Miliband, you'd have thought that it was the Department for Climate Change (well, for tackling Climate Change), with the Energy side being rather overlooked.

So today's Daily Telegraph provides a stark reminder of the urgent need for politicians and policy makers not to ignore the need to ensure energy supplies in the near future. 

The paper cites official figures showing demand for power exceeding supply from the national grid "within eight years", and warning of the prospect of "widespread power cuts".

And these are problems which Greg Clark, Miliband's shadow, claims the Government is not facing up to:

Greg Clark, the shadow climate and energy change secretary, said: “Britain faces blackouts because the Government has put its head in the sand about Britain’s energy policy for a decade. Over the next 10 years we need to replace one third of our generating capacity but Labour has left it perilously late, and has been forced to admit they expect power cuts for the first time since the 1970s.

“The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of a new generating capacity, and to take steps to ensure that as a matter of national security there is enough capacity to provide a robust margin of safety.”

Mr Clark also pointed out that the scale of the blackouts could in fact be three times worse than the Government predictions. He said some of the modelling used was “optimistic” as it assumes little or no change in electricity demand up until to 2020.

It also assumes a rapid increase in wind farm capacity. There is also the assumption that existing nuclear power stations will be granted extensions to their “lifetimes".

The Telegraph also carries a robust editorial stating that "when the power cuts start, blame Labour", reminding us that the Government has been slow to order replacements for ageing nuclear reactors - at a time when EU directives are forcing the closure of nine oil and coal-fired power plants: at that rate, a few additional wind farms are not going to be sufficient to stop the lights going out... 

Jonathan Isaby

I've been watching (but under-reporting) Greg Clark's statements on energy and climate change.  It's interesting that our lead spokesman on Energy and Climate Change appears to be emphasising energy supply rather than environmental issues in his presentation of his thinking.

He has written for The Guardian's Comment is free this morning:

"Despite the UK having some of the best natural resources in the world, Britain generates less energy from renewables than any other EU country apart from Malta and Luxembourg.  If that were not bad enough, Britain has the least energy efficient homes of any major European country. We are literally uninsulated against the long-term rise in energy prices, with fuel poverty the result for millions of families."

He continues:

"The Conservatives will give support to the key measures that the government has now committed to – including paying families and businesses for generating heat or electricity, plans for fitting carbon capture and storage technology to coal-fired power stations and improving domestic energy efficiency with the upfront costs repaid through savings in energy bills – indeed these are policies we have already proposed in our Low Carbon Economy green paper."

I'd still like to see much more discussion of nuclear power from the Tory frontbench and as a climate change sceptic I'm much more relaxed about coal making a bigger contribution to keeping the lights on.

Do read John Webley's article on the extraordinary supply shortfalls associated with wind power from last Saturday if you haven't already.

Tim Montgomerie