Dealing with Davey

You have to pity the poor energy companies trying to deal with someone quite as erratic as Ed Davey. As he lurches from ridiculous policy measure to preposterous policy statement, people's livelihoods are trashed and trampled with the occupant of DECC apparently careless of what he is doing.

The Guardian has obtained a letter written by the head of Oil and Gas UK to Davey, essentially inquiring if he has thought through the implications of what he is doing and saying:

Webb wrote to Davey a few days later: “[Newspaper] articles reported you backing moves that would encourage investors to think about moving their money out of ‘risky’ fossil fuel assets, suggesting global emissions limits could make hydrocarbon reserves unburnable, therefore stranding assets and rendering them worthless.”

Webb said: “I must confess I find these statements unsettling. They come, after all, at a time when you and the Treasury are putting great effort into delivering the much-needed regulatory and fiscal reforms that will make the UK North Sea more [original italics] attractive to investors in oil and gas, not less. I am intrigued to understand how such opposing viewpoints can be reconciled.”

Of course Davey's words are aimed at winning votes from green-minded voters, so this is a case of doing one thing and saying another; that's just what politicians do (and why they shouldn't be entrusted with anything more important than the opening of a summer fete). But still, it can't be easy to have to deal with people like this on a regular basis.

Comments

[Mike Jackson]

johanna
You should watch the episode.
Burke's point was that without electricity (for which in this context read 'reliable' electricity) everything in the modern world breaks down. The comfortable middle-classes will be hit as hard as anyone because of their reliance on sophisticated energy-intensive consumer goods.
As jamesp says, they may well have their own generators. So? We are talking about a plan to stop producing fossil fuels in toto. There won't be any fuel to power their generators. Their cars won't work; their ride-on lawnmowers won't work; their central heating won't work (except if it's gas-fired and only then when the intermittent electricity supply from the wind farms is available).
They will buy electric cars, they say, evidently assuming that the "fuel" for them is something different from what comes out of the light bulb or the three-pin plug. How they will replace all the other things in their lives from clothes to medicines they haven't even started to think about.
You may call it apocalyptic but it is the route that the environmentalists want us to go down and the biggest supporters of the green movement are these comfortable middle-classes. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

[Andrew Duffin]

"'much' of the cost of wind etc is offset by the tax payer"

Oh, the magic money tree, you mean?

Have they been talking to the SNP by any chance?

[Vernon E]

JamesG

You just prove your point.d