Will BEIS and Boris be good for business?

Utility Week magazine editor Suzanne Heneghan considers the to do list ahead for the new cabinet

Among the many entertaining stories to emerge during Boris Johnson’s colourful leadership campaign was how our new PM once played God in his school play.

Listening to his victorious speech on the steps of Downing Street, it was pretty easy to see why.But despite the political carnival and bluster already synonymous with his reign, Johnson will be acutely aware of the Herculean tasks ahead, including – ironically for the man who also once aspired to be “king of the world” – how the UK will now treat the planet.

Business is praying – to paraphrase Johnson’s political idol ­Winston Churchill’s champagne toast to himself on entering No 10 – that Boris doesn’t “bugger it up”. With just 90-plus days to go until Brexit and time already ticking on a spectacularly ambitious national net zero programme, the stakes are too high – not least for utilities.

Delegation, a trademark feature of Johnson’s London mayor-ship, will therefore be key.

Enter stage right Andrea Leadsom, the woman who has been given the almighty job of leading the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). And she needs to get on with it fast. Energy companies are putting their faith in her to deliver swiftly on some long overdue critical leadership and direction.

Meanwhile, her in-tray is bulging. BEIS committee chair Rachel Reeves has already drafted her a to-do list and stamped it “urgent”.

Calls to plug the policy gaps across a litany of low-carbon areas, including electric vehicles, carbon capture, usage and storage and onshore wind – both its exclusion from contracts for difference auctions and planning restrictions on new onshore wind farms – will be competing for the new secretary of state’s attention.

She will also need to fight BEIS’s corner as her new colleague at No 11 considers former chancellor Philip Hammond’s estimate that meeting net zero carbon emissions by 2050 would cost £1 trillion – a claim disputed by the Committee on Climate Change.

While a cautious welcome to the appointment of the former energy minister has come from some industry quarters, the jury remains out in others.

Memories are long in utilities. Not all recollections of Leadsom’s time at the now defunct Department of Energy and Climate Change are positive – particularly on the cutting of renewables subsidies.

Her more recent comments around the climate emergency and the rise of the clean growth sector suggest a new mindset.

But does she mean business?

• UTILITY WEEK CONGRESS 2019
  Suzanne Heneghan will be co-chairing Utility Week Congress 2019, a two-day event in Birmingham from 8-9 October, where meeting the UK’s net zero targets will be one of the key themes discussed. For further information or to book your ticket, visit: uw-event.co.uk/congress