Power, politics and policies

I lay in the bath on Sunday night re-reading the Report of the Public Local Inquiry into the proposed windfarm in Eishken.

With a glass of wine in one hand and the jacuzzi bath bubbling around me, I was perfectly relaxed.

Until, that was, I read the Report and this week's Economist magazine.

The Report is all things to all men - maybe aye and maybe no - and is aimless in its attempts for balance and an objective review of the evidence and the submissions.

Everyone was given a fair hearing, and (virtually) all the evidence was accepted. Meaning anything and nothing to everyone. Time and planning applications have moved on, and we are still no nearer or clearer about the acceptability or otherwise of large-scale wind farm developments on the islands.

Lingerbay II anyone? Which is something we all wanted to avoid.

But the bigger policy issue was in an excellent Economist article called "The looming electricity crunch" which clearly sets out the impending problems we will be facing.

Renewables will never bridge the gap - that's a given -until the technology moves on dramatically, but the underlying imbalance between demand and supply highlights the over-dependence on a free-market solution.

The Economist was advocating a rush to nuclear as a potential solution, as was Tony Blair after he prevaricated so long that every other option was ruled out, but now it certainly appears that there is no solution that is going to bridge the gap; other than reliance on supplies from Russia.

We are all going to have to face the fact that there are going to be major energy shortages in the next decade as a direct result of the failure of the Labour Government to take any decisions, instead (mis)placing their faith in the free market to meet demand.

There is an urgent need for long-term strategic decision making, both conventional and renewable, and for new structures to encourage security of supply. That can probably only come about with major changes in the way in which the energy companies operate, and with more state intervention in the infrastructure.

This country is burdened with regulation for the sake of regulation, which abrogates responsibility to quangos and believes that the free-market must solve everything. Our politicians then deny any correlation between that and the inability to get things done. We are not as bad as Ethiopia, but we get close.

One only needs to look at the farce over the Beauly-Denny power line and the need for Ofgem to encourage bidding for the electricity infrastructure to understand that politicians seem unable to take and implement necessary long-term strategic decisions. The trivial and stupid stuff is easy for them; but deciding yea or nay to what sort of power supplies we will have in ten years time is too difficult for them.

When the lights threaten to go out, I'll be throwing the nearest politician onto the fire.