Hill+Knowlton Strategies

‘We are in the game!!!’ roared Simon Hughes, very excitedly, as he tried (perhaps a little too hard) to convince the Lib Dem conference (and the media, no doubt!) that he is, in fact, a ‘rock solid’ supporter of the coalition. It is this sense of being ‘in the game’ after 65 years in opposition that has gone a long way to appease Hughes and many-a-concerned party activist’s worries about the coalition government over the last six months.

Still, with great power inevitably comes great expectation, and with green issues seen as the heartbeat of the party by many, Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, addressing conference for the first time in his new role, was always going to be under great scrutiny by the masses In Liverpool this week.

In his speech to conference yesterday, supported by a carefully co-ordinated series of fringe events, Huhne set about outlining the coalition’s plans to tackle what he described as ‘the greatest challenge across Whitehall in peacetime’.

Addressing climate change, he said, is this Government’s most pressing task in the years ahead, while the UK’s overdependence on big oil means future price fluctuations have the capacity to drain billions from the UK economy. The two interrelated threats would be tackled, he said, by the ‘four pillars’ of the coalition’s energy policy:

1. The ‘Green Deal’ will see companies paying to insulate every home in Britain, allowing them to save both energy and money.
2. A ‘third industrial revolution’ of low-carbon renewable growth will wean the UK off fossil fuels and fulfil the country’s need for more electricity going forward (demand for electricity is expected to double by 2050).
3. Nuclear energy, funded entirely by private industry, will give the UK greater energy security.
4. Clean coal and gas will account for renewable energy’s variability and provide the UK with protection from future oil price shocks.

As I wrote yesterday, Huhne had two major challenges as he made his way to Liverpool this week. On the one hand, he needed to simultaneously reassure activists in his own party over their worries about nuclear while appeasing Conservative cabinet colleague’s concerns about the UK’s future energy security. In addition, he, like the rest of the Lib Dem leadership, needed to convince his party that liberalism has not been nullified by conservatism in the coalition.

It was interesting to see how he approached both.

‘A deal is a deal’, he said of nuclear, with a nod and a wink to the Tories during his speech to conference yesterday. Throughout this week, Huhne has spoke off ‘ending the standoff’ on nuclear energy and has insisted that he is ‘entirely comfortable’ with the coalition’s position on the issue. On first glance, it would seem like he has conceded much ground to the Conservatives on the issue, yet, having witnessed his less publicised conversations within small fringe meetings, I’m not sure that all is necessarily what it seems.

Speaking to worried party members in close confines, Huhne has been at pains to point out that £1.7bn of DECC’s £3.2bn annual budget is spent on clearing up after past generations who were lax on attributing responsibility for nuclear decommissioning. This, he says, is damn-right unacceptable. The great worry over nuclear amongst the Lib Dem faithful is that nasty corporate giants will invest in projects in the short term, before swanning off and leaving little old communities and the humble tax payer to pick up the tap for decommissioning. “No hidden subsidies for nuclear!” declared Huhne in his speech to conference yesterday, a pointed hint that he is on top of the issue.

Huhne addressed his second challenge by attempting to give the Lib Dems ownership over green coalition policy, just as Nick Clegg had done with a range of coalition policies in his speech on Monday. By linking energy and climate change policy with wider social issues – such as poverty, unemployment and consumer rights – he was able to relate coalition energy policy to classic Lib Dem values like internationalism, localism, and, most notably, fairness. Discussion of the Green Deal, for example, was hampered with footnotes over how reducing energy waste could help advance society by lifting people out of poverty.

With next year’s local elections approaching fast, Huhne has bolstered Lib Dem party stalwarts green arsenal as they take to the doorsteps, while he has addressed the nuclear issue with enough subtlety and craft to keep a number of competing voices at bay.

Big smiles all round then? Well, yes, but Chris Huhne will know that much more difficult challenges are yet to come. Giving ownership of green issues to a party full of environmentalists was never likely to be an overly hard sell.

Green plans are all well and good, but convincing investors, businesses and consumers to pick up the tab for the transition to a low-carbon economy will be much trickier, especially when the coalition’s spending cuts start to bite.

Departing Liverpool this week, Huhne will have reason to be positive. Equally, he will know that he has hardly scratched the surface of Whitehall’s ‘greatest ever’ peacetime challenge.

As conference season kicks off with the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool, there’s something in particular that I am looking for in the multitude tweets and updates from colleagues and others that are on the sidelines this week. That is the coalition intentions with regards renewable energy subsidies and support.

On Thursday this week the FT tells us that energy minister Chris Huhne will be launching the world’s largest wind farm. The London Array will eventually consist of 341 turbines generating 1,000 megawatts of electricity off the coasts of Kent and Essex in the South East of England, paid for in part by Masdar, the Abu Dhabi government’s initiative to encourage development of green technologies. No doubt the launch will be subject to a fanfare celebrating the UK’s leadership in renewable technologies. However, as Christopher Booker’s editorial in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph suggests there will be many others lamenting the cost that subsidies place upon  energy users at a time that they can least afford it.

The next few quarters will be critical to the success of maintaining existing energy policy. As the spending review is rolled out and cuts begin to bite, taxpayers may well start to question their inflated energy bills, which the DECC expect to increase by 33% by 2020, and their commitment to some of the most ambitious renewable targets in the developed world. Let’s hope for the coalition’s sake that this is not compounded by a harsh winter.

‘It’s the same old Lib Dem conference, except this year it feels … different’.

Those were the words of David Grossman as he recorded footage for Newsnight following Nick Clegg’s speech to the party faithful yesterday. He’s right.

Despite significant losses in recent opinion polls, this year’s conference in Liverpool has attracted more people than ever before – 6000 are said to have descended on the city this week. Largely though, the increase in numbers is a product of a dramatic rise in business and media interest rather than an inflated number of party members.

Sure, the bearded, sandal-wearing loyalists remain, but they have been diluted by a mass of suited young corporate types. Meanwhile, paparazzi swooped on Nick and Miriam Clegg in a manner that would have been quite unheard of six months ago. As ordinary members make their way through new airport-style security, they seem a little uneasy that their annual get together has been gatecrashed.

Still, they’ve got bigger fish to fry. As is well documented, Lib Dem activists are increasingly concerned that their leader has jumped into bed with the Tories, with many grumbling that Clegg, a centrist ‘Orange book’ Liberal, has become disconnected with the left-leaning mainstream.

Yesterday morning, The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour argued that, in order to proclaim this year’s conference a success, Clegg needed to do two things. He must reassure the party that liberalism is not being crushed by the ‘juggernaught of Conservatism’ within Government, said Wintour, all the while restating the cause for the deficit programme in a convincing manner.

Not easy. And it didn’t get any easier. By early afternoon the party’s leadership had been defeated in a conference vote over their support for ‘free schools’ on the grounds that a currently ‘unfair’ school system would be made more unequal under coalition plans, worsening educational outcomes for the majority of children.

The stage was set for Clegg, and, despite an outright refusal to criticise his Conservative coalition partners, an upbeat and defiant speech saw the leader leave the main auditorium at Liverpool’s ACC to a rapturous standing ovation. ‘Stick with us’ he said, urging the party to ‘hold our nerve’ and play the long game. A list of liberal achievements in power precluded a staunch defence of coalition plans to cut the deficit immediately. The 2010s, he said, would not be a return to the 1980s. This time around, public sector cuts will be made on a practical rather than an ideological basis, and will be intertwined with a sense of ‘fairness’.

Some, undoubtedly, will remain sceptical, especially with the argument over the timing of cuts (given the leader’s u-turn on the timing of deficit-reduction measures). Nonetheless, Clegg did succeed in generating a feeling of euphoria with the faithful that has not been seen since the lofty days of ‘Cleggmania’ during the general election campaign. While his words will be painted by many outside the party as desperate pleading, to a membership that has waited so long to taste power, they were received as a welcome unifying battlecry.

Clegg departed the conference last night as the UN beckoned. But the show will go on. Today, the Energy and Climate Change secretary, Chris Huhne, will take to the stage as he looks to showcase the coalition’s record on green issues. A range of energy-related fringe events are set to provide the perfect backdrop.

With environmental activism the apple of many-a-Lib Dem eye, there is sure to be close scrutiny. Nuclear will undoubtedly remain the elephant in the room. While the party remain opposed to the development of nuclear power stations, the coalition is encouraging private investors to drive nuclear new-build despite a reluctance to subsidise investors with public funding.

Speaking on a panel that included EDF CEO Vincent de Rivaz, Huhne last night reiterated that he ‘is not theologically opposed to nuclear’. But many in the party are. Huhne will have to tread carefully on this thorny issue, all the while considering the pro-nuclear views of his Conservative colleagues in Government. Having rattled a few Tory feathers already this week by expressing his opposition to a like-for-like replacement for Trident, he is likely to want to play down the nuclear issue as much as possible.

Elsewhere, members are concerned that the party is not doing enough to push green issues in Government. With next year’s local elections drawing ever closer, local party stalwarts are pushing for a radical environmental campaigning platform. Yesterday the rank and file pushed through an amendment to a policy motion on ‘green taxation’ that set a target of securing no less than 10% of its taxes from environmental revenue by 2015. Ministers had urged voting members to pass the motion with no amendment.

Huhne’s challenge, then, is to build on Clegg’s speech yesterday, showcasing a radical liberal commitment to green issues that sets the party apart from the ‘Conservative juggernaught’. For a party still basking in their first taste of power, this is likely to be enough to quieten dissenting voices over the deficit-programme for now. Nevertheless, as rhetoric takes a back seat to tangible cuts over the next twelve months, next year’s conference may be a different story.

So following Larry Hagman’s (Dallas’ JR Ewing) switch to alternative energy with American solar panel company, SolarWorld, it seems solar is the hot topic of the summer!

Everywhere I look this week in the media there is a story on solar and its benefits, but is it really a friend for the future or will it turn and bite us?

A neighbour of mine has had solar panels fitted for a while now and seems quite content with them. I can see the benefit of using such a powerful natural resource as a source of power but would I put solar panels on my roof? Not likely to be fair and I’m sure I’m not alone in this view, although reports from BBC show that more than 2,000 homeowners have already had solar panels installed and are using electricity for free.

Now it seems the government has chosen solar as its new ‘thing’ and is creating cash incentives for people who generate their own power. As we saw with the car scrappage scheme, cash incentives seem to work in this country so I’m sure we’ll see solar panels popping up left, right and centre in the near future. But as they say, you don’t get anything for free!

Whilst we’re all basking in the warm glow that solar panels will give us free electricity and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, folks across the other side of the pond are asking questions about the long-term environmental impact of disposing of solar panels. Erica Gies’ piece on The Guardian’s website discusses what impact making and disposing of solar panels has on the planet and our health and it’s quite an eye-opener. I hadn’t realised that solar modules contained so many potentially dangerous materials.

I guess there’s two ways of looking at this – we either embrace solar full on, knowing that there are risks but that solutions for recycling are being investigated and that we need to have alternative fuels for the future or we wait, see how solar progresses in the next few years and hope that manufacturers find safer ways to make and dispose of panels and probably get left behind the rest of the world. Whichever way you go, it looks like solar is here to stay – all we need now is the sun!