These pages set out our wider thinking on issues relating to innovation, governance and practice for a sustainable, secure and affordable energy system.
New Thinking
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New Thinking: the man at the bar
The man at the bar Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 18th December 2015 DECC has just announced that it is cutting financial support to solar. This follows on from Amber Rudd’s ‘reset’ speech; the Chancellor’s Spending Review ; the 2nd capacity auction which continues to primarily support existing fossil fuels; and this week’s vote by MPs to allow fracking under national parks. Together this has left British energy policy based on nuclear power and gas – neither of which will come through under current, extremely expensive policies. Two brilliant blogs: one by Damian Carrington and the
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New Thinking: Energy System Change not Climate Change
Energy System Change not Climate Change Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 14th December 2015 COP21 has led to a new climate change policy agreement. While it could have been stronger, it could also have been weaker. The world had already tipped to a global discourse towards a sustainable energy future, based on renewables. What the Paris Agreement has done has strengthened that global discourse. The dominant underlying energy technology pathways of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) is towards more renewables. There will of course be outlier countries, like GB, who choose nuclear over renewables but
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New Thinking: Contemporary US Political Party Energy Politics
Contemporary US Political Party Energy Politics – still a lot to play for Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 10th November 2015 Just once in a while one goes to a meeting where one learns an awful lot in a short time. A three-person slot at a University of Columbia’s Energy Symposium about US energy politics last week was one of those wonderful knowledge transfer events – not really because of the deep knowledge base of the speakers – which is often the case – but, much more rarely, because the speakers (Heather Zichal and Jeffrey Kupfer)
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New Thinking: Progressive Regulation – What Future For Ofgem?
Progressive Regulation – What Future For OFGEM? Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 26th October 2015 Dermot Nolan, the CEO of Ofgem, when talking to the recent 2015 Annual Energy UK conference, set out a progressive energy vision for the future. It was a broad-ranging overview exploring the issues which the Regulator finds himself having to deal with. Importantly though, he also illuminated just how much we are all in this together. Long term solutions for a legitimate, sustainable energy system have to be bought into by all stakeholders. His final comment was: ‘I invite all of
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New Thinking: Fit-for-purpose GB Energy Governance
Fit-for-purpose GB Energy Governance – what is it? and what to call it – DEG or OBR? Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 13th October 2015 IGov published a Working Paper in March 2015 called Public Value Energy Governance: establishing an institutional framework which better fits a sustainable, secure and affordable energy system which included a ‘straw’ model for a restructured institutional framework for a GB Governance system. We suggest this framework is fit for purpose, as opposed to the current governance system which is not. Governance is here taken to mean the policies, institutions, rules and
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New Thinking: China Gives Priority to Green Dispatch
China Gives Priority to Green Dispatch Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 29th September 2015 Much has been talked about China possibly financing a portion of a GB nuclear power plant in the last few weeks. However, whilst China may be building some nuclear power plants – the support for them is small compared to the support given to renewables. Moreover, as was discussed in a recent blog, for technical reasons a dispatch choice has to be made. This choice can be set up to be made in all sorts of ways. These can be complementary to decentralised
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New Thinking: Saving Face
Saving Face Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 22nd September 2015 IGov is investigating the link between innovation and governance. Ideally we would like to produce our own theory of why it is some countries seem to be more able to move to a demand focused energy policy – in other words an energy policy which minimises the energy it uses. The idea behind IGov was to understand why it is that Britain – as opposed to many other countries – takes such unique decisions which tend to ignore best practice elsewhere and which tend to be relatively
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New Thinking: Energy and Corbynomics
Energy and Corbynomics Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 4th September 2015 Many column inches have been used up discussing what Jeremy Corbyn stands for, and whether he would be a disaster for the Labour Party. With respect to energy, what seems to have caught the headlines is his potential for ‘renationalising’ the Big 6. It turns out however, on reading Corbyn’s environmental manifesto, Protecting Our Planet, and his 10 energy pledges given below, that the words ‘renationalise’ or ‘renationalisation’ are not used. The nearest phrases are: Our campaign will prioritise our planet and stand for ‘Britain providing
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US Blog: The US Clean Power Plan 2015
US Blog: The US Clean Power Plan 2015 – an explanation Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 24th August 2015 Overview The US Clean Power Plan (CPP) was announced at the beginning of August 2015, and follows on from the Presidents Climate Action Plan of 2013. The first stage of the CPP was announced in 2014 and the final CPP is very different from that proposed a year ago. The CPP has come into being via the EPA, and their ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via air quality legislation (The Clean Air Act, 111d). The EPA has
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New Thinking: NY Reforming the Energy Vision – an update
NY Reforming the Energy Vision – an update Catherine Mitchell, IGov Team, 19th August 2015 The USA is a very interesting place for energy at the moment. Last year, IGov produced a series of blogs on the USA called Lessons from America. One of those was about the New York Reforming the Energy Vision – arguably the most progressive thing happening in energy policy in the US at the moment. This blog is an update on that first blog about NY – and a detailed working paper about its substance will be published in November
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