Energy policy in the UK is one of the most dysfunctional of our Westminster departments. The total reliance on a ‘ private sector ‘ driven by an ever changing set of carrots and sticks has led to a situation where our subsidy cap – the Levy Control Framework – is almost certainly going to be breached, which will cause a Treasury reaction. This reaction will impact on how, how much more, and even what renewables we can allow over the next few years, never mind the next decade.

When the choice of renewables is left to the market, and the carrot is skewed, the market delivers what makes most sense to it – profit – not what makes most sense to the country. We now have the nonsense of a vast investment in solar PV, a fairly useless technology in a not very sunny country at 50 degrees north latitude. This investment is now costing over £1 billion per year in subsidy ( according to the NAO ), for a paltry amount of electricity produced at a time when we do not need it, but not at a time when we do need it.