Energy

Energy

How often do you contemplate the source of the heating and lighting for your home?Or where the oil in your car comes from?The vast and infinitely complicatednetworks that carry oil, gas and electricityaround the globe are mostly invisible orunnoticed, and yet they are as vital as veinsin the human body.

A prime political responsibility is that of keeping the lights on. But at this particularpoint in human history, that responsibilityis hedged with other anxieties: the risingprofits of energy companies, the potentialfor conflict and the urgent need to find newlow-carbon sources of energy. It’s quite a list.

We’ve set out to look at the internationalpressures that the UK energy market feels,and to examine the twin issues of energysecurity and decarbonisation a little moreclosely. We look at transport, and we also sum up the policies of the three main political parties and put them before a panelconsisting of a representative from a UKpower company, an energy-fund managerand a clean-energy consultant. The results arenot at all what you would expect . . .

15 March 2010

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