The energy minister has pledged to examine the balance between the electricity costs being paid by industry and householders.
At a fringe meeting yesterday (1 October) at the Conservative party conference, organised by the Centre for Policy Studies thinktank, Kwasi Kwarteng said that he wanted to look at the relatively expensive cost of energy for UK business.
“The costs of electricity in Germany is much lower for industry and higher for consumers: that’s something we need to look at,” he said, citing a key conclusion of the Helm review of energy costs, published in 2017.
Kwarteng also said that he had commissioned work from within the department about potential pathways to reaching the net-zero target after taking over the energy portfolio this summer.
“I got frustrated that we are always talking about the target and have very little idea of how to get there.”
And the minister slammed Labour’s new 2030 decarbonisation target.
There is a “great deal of scepticism” about the date set out in the Green New Deal motion approved by the Labour party conference last week, he said, describing it as a “figure plucked out of thin air.”
The motion, which was overwhelmingly supported by the Labour conference but has yet to be formally adopted as party policy, commits the party to achieve net-zero emissions by 2030
And he questioned whether private investors would be willing to take a stake in the new state backed wind farms, announced by shadow business and energy secretary Rebecca Long Bailey at Labour’s conference last week.
Kwarteng said: “This is completely insane and deterring investment in infrastructure.”
“We’ve got to distinguish the need to deal with decarbonisation issues from the ragbag of left-wing pressure groups. We’ve got to be to be very, very vigilant.”
He also said that he would “probably” have approved the Hinkley Point C nuclear station, despite the expense that its construction will involve.
And Kwarteng admitted that while initially sceptical about the energy price cap introduced under ex-prime minister Theresa May, he had been “impressed” at how it has worked in practice.