Political Agenda: Fusion grabs headlines but new homes standard could be a game-changer

The eye-catching claim of fusion power by 2040 may have caught the attention at the Conservative Party Conference but it was the more prosaic announcement about energy efficiency that really matters, argues David Blackman.

It was pretty quiet earlier this week at the Conservative party conference in Manchester. It was possible to find a table in the Midland Hotel right next to the main conference venue, which is normally heaving throughout the annual Tory jamboree.

Turnout was better by the following day, by which point most MPs probably realised that they could afford to make the trip to Manchester even if the House of Commons was sitting.

A rash of pre-election announcements during the conference don’t seem to have really caught the imagination of an electorate that remains focused on the unresolved problems ¬surrounding Brexit.

Those announcements included a package of measures, announced prior to the conference starting, to deliver the 2050 net-zero emissions pledge.

The most eye-catching of these was extra funding for nuclear fusion.

However, as the wags invariably point out, fusion technology always seems 30 years away from taking off.

Business and energy secretary Andrea Leadsom’s speech at the conference contained no new details on how the government will implement its landmark pledge earlier this year to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.

More significant was probably her housing counterpart’s move to press ahead with the Future Homes Standard, which will boost the energy efficiency of new dwellings.

Energy efficiency may be unsexy, but it is less likely to be a road to nowhere than fusion.