Rudd’s reset a ‘constraint’ on energy transformation

Former energy secretary Amber Rudd’s framework for energy policy is a “constraint” on the development of decentralised energy, according to Ed Davey.

Davey, a former energy secretary criticised Rudd’s vision for the future of energy in the UK as “incoherent and inconsistent” as he spoke at a Cornwall Energy conference yesterday.

Davey delivered the keynote address at the event, which focussed on the barriers to creating a smart and flexible energy system in the UK.

Davey said that the creation of a “hybrid system” in which centralised generation plays a diminished role alongside a system characterised by decentralised and renewable energy technologies, is “inevitable”.

However, he observed that Rudd’s policy framework, which she set out in late 2015 and which is still nominally supported by government, is focussed on adaptation of a centralised energy system.

This has been a “constraint on proper thinking in government” said Davey.

The so-called energy “reset” is a framework which “wants to take us back to the future,” insisted Davey. “It feels like a policy designed for 1982, but nonetheless is the policy which has been shaping policy thinking.”

Davey did “give Greg Clark credit” for appearing to move away from the reset framework by issuing a call for evidence on the creation of a smart and flexible energy system and supporting a review of embedded benefits. He said this evidence of support for a hybrid evolution was “refreshing” – though he questioned whether it was understood and endorsed by the government more broadly, especially Number 10.

Davey also observed that government must now “scramble” to catch up with decentralised technology advances and create a “completely new allocation of system costs”. This thinking “ought to be quite a lot further along,” he said.