Paul Goodman interviews Greg Clark

This is the fourth in Paul Goodman's  series of shadow cabinet interviews. Jeremy Hunt, Theresa Villiers and Nick Herbert have already been interviewed.

All portfolios are difficult, but some are more difficult than others.  Consider Greg Clark’s.  At least four big interest groups have the Shadow Energy Secretary in their sights.

The man-made global warming establishment wants a Conservative Government to set tough targets for emission reductions “to save the planet”.

The anti man-made global warming interest argues that target-led reductions will stifle growth and boost fuel poverty.

The energy security buffs warn that the lights will go out within the next ten years if lost capacity isn’t replaced.

The fuel poverty lobby wants fuel poverty reduced.

Few commentators seem to believe that any political party can square the circle.  “The money just ain’t there,” Dan Lewis of the Economic Policy Centre wrote about Conservative plans to invest in renewables and nuclear replacement.  The Taxpayers’ Alliance has warned that cutting emissions by over 40% by 2020 would slash the size of the economy by almost a third.  Matt Sinclair worried here that Clark now proposes a carbon tax which could double energy bills.

At the risk of turning my hour or so with Clark upside-down, I’ll put conclusions upfront:

• The peaks of environmental concern tend to coincide with the peaks of economic booms.  Perhaps the best-known photo of David Cameron – on a husky-drawn sled in Norway – was snapped before the crash.  Rightly or wrongly, the recession has knocked the environment down the political agenda.  The University of East Anglia climate gate scandal has damaged the global warming cause.  The severe winter has dented faith in it further.
• I suspect that Clark has clocked all this, sniffed a rise in climate change scepticism on the centre-right and - with a future Conservative Government perhaps enjoying a small overall majority – adjusted policy accordingly.  Not so long ago, the Party’s view was that nuclear power should be “a last resort”.  But during a major recent policy announcement, Clark pledged to speed up nuclear plant construction.  His speech put energy security, rather than curbing emissions, front-of-house.
• Clark confirmed to me that no single Conservative energy policy is now aimed exclusively at reducing emissions – and, thereby, “saving the planet”.  “Since I’ve had this post,” he told me, “I’ve always sought to make sure that there are multiple justifications for policies that we have in this area.  It turns out to an almost astonishing extent that the things you’d want to do to tackle climate change are the things that you’d want to do to reduce fuel poverty and the things that you’d want to secure the industrial future of the country so I think that all our policies have multiple justifications.”  This is a significant shift in policy emphasis.
• Clark also made it clear that a Conservative Government would publish Department of Energy research into the costs to Britain of signing up to a 30% EU emissions reduction target by 2020 – which the Government is refusing to do.  “Of course we should publish across government,” he said, “especially given the controversies in the climate change field I think any research ought to be available for public scrutiny.”

So what’s the story of the man who’s quietly but determinedly brushing up Conservative energy policy?  And can he turn the ragged policy circle into a perfect square?