Letter from the Editor: which PM would serve utilities best?

The odds have tightened in the Conservative leadership race following last week’s rumpus in the Johnson-Symonds household, but which candidate represents the best victor for utilities?

With decarbonisation now firmly front and centre of utility strategies – across energy and water – the ability of our new premier to advance sensible environmental policy is key.

It’s no surprise that both Johnson and Hunt recently rediscovered themselves as environmental champions, despite having a mutual history of climate change scepticism, or at least ambivalence if their voting records on key environmental issues are anything to go by.

The past year’s momentous outpouring of climate concern from academic and government advisory organisations and, not least, the voting public, has caused climate change doubters in politics to fall away like so many miles of Arctic ice shelf. And in any case, by the time the next PM assumes power, the new net zero target for 2050 will have been legislated.

The key for utilities, though, is who will act most swiftly and convincingly to create the desperately needed policy frameworks to see net zero through? And who is more likely to kick the can down the road?

That’s hard to say. Some utility leaders have privately expressed doubt about Johnson’s will or capacity to understand the complexity of delivering net zero – though he did once tell New Scientist that his favourite science topic at school was nuclear physics (shortly before quipping that London should “definitely, absolutely” have its own nuclear power station).

But Boris has never majored on the detail. Instead he relies on an entourage of experts to do the heavy lifting on policy-making – and now he has the influence of Symonds, a motivated ­environmentalist, to inform him. So perhaps he could mobilise a net zero taskforce capable of delivering the certainty utilities need around the future for energy efficiency, EV charging frameworks, routes to market for key renewable and carbon capture technologies and so on.

Hunt’s leadership style is more of an unknown. What we can say with some confidence is that departmental leadership has a greater chance of stability if he manages to nab the premiership, meaning the energy white paper, coveted by industry leaders and understood to be waiting in the wings, has a greater chance of seeing the light of day this year