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10 | 11TH - 17TH OCTOBER 2019 | UTILITY WEEK Policy & Regulation Analysis E nergy got a walk-on part in Boris Johnson's headline speech at the Con- servative party conference last week. The prime minister used the recent boom in solar and wind power generation to back up his wider case that Britain can "beat the sceptics". He said: "It was only a few years ago when people were saying that solar power would never work in cloudy old Britain and that wind turbines would not pull the skin off a rice pudding." While that was true, keen-eyed observers were quick to point out that it was a certain Boris Johnson who had used that phrase about wind power in a Daily Telegraph col- umn which he wrote when he was humble mayor of London. Given Johnson's reputation for filing copy at the last minute, it wasn't beyond question that he had included the line in the speech without checking. Regardless, critics would say there are plenty of reasons to dispute his substantive point that there is no reason why the same kind of strides cannot be delivered in nuclear fusion technology. What is clear is that Johnson's speech shows how the Tories have embraced green energy, even if government policy in this area o†en fails to match its rhetoric. Any scepticism about efforts to tackle climate change is most likely to be heard on the fringes of the Conservative conference, where free market think-tanks tout their wares to party members. These are the kind of meeting where it wouldn't have been that unusual to hear the very concept of man-made climate change questioned a few years ago. These days, the concerns tend to focus on how fast emissions can be cut rather than whether it is a good idea in principle. Rush to action Victoria Hewson, head of regulatory affairs at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), warned about the risks of pushing ahead too fast with emissions reductions at a meet- ing organised by the free market supporting think-tank. She said a too rapid push threatened to spark the kind of backlash that French presi- dent Emmanuel Macron faced from the "gilet jaunes" protesters just under a year ago a†er his government hiked fuel duties. Ben Houchen, mayor of the Tees Valley Combined Authority, highlighted the impact of the target's adoption, which he told the IEA meeting would have a bigger impact on the UK economy than Brexit. He said getting to 80 per cent of 1990 emissions levels by 2050, the previous target, was already a "pretty ambitious target". However, Houchen said this target was "relatively straightforward", given that it relied on existing technologies. Getting to net zero emissions relies on technologies, like hydrogen, which are at an early stage of development and "extortion- ately" expensive. The way that parliament adopted the net zero target in July, which was passed by MPs without even a vote a†er a debate that lasted just 90 minutes, prompted some disquiet among Tories at fringe meetings. Conservative backbench MP Bim Afolami suggested that his fellow MPs had been "scared" into unanimously supporting the measure. Houchen said there had been a "lot of political pressure" on MPs to vote for net zero, adding that policymakers need to be "very careful" about how they go about implementing the target. Referring to his own area, he said: "Tees- side has done pretty well at cutting carbon emissions by half – we did it by closing the steelworks and putting 3,000 people out of work. "This is about how we use it to stimulate the market to not only reduce emissions but generate jobs and wages." One of those who once might have been sympathetic to such concerns is Kwasi Kwarteng. The recently appointed minis- ter of state for energy made his name when a newly elected MP as one of the authors of a collection of essays entitled Britannia Unchained, published in 2011. At a time when the Tory parry had tacked to the centre by forming a coalition with Tories' pathway to net zero starts to emerge The Conservative party conference may have been light on policy announcements, but there were further signs of the Tories' plans for reaching the 2050 net zero target. David Blackman reports.