Once the insecurity of uncertainty from a hung parliament abates, so the energy investment community will get back to the business of assessing the consistency of UK energy policy. Having spent at least the last election year focussing more carefully on energy policies of not one, but three main parties, there will be more of the same to come.

The three main parties have broadly prioritised the same issues of climate change, energy costs, and security of supply. Whilst there has been criticism that there is little in the way of a road map to achieve some of the ambitious climate change and other goals, there is already consensus on some methodology, including the cross-party desire for the UK to create its own infrastructure bank to promote green infrastructure, involving private capital (and with Conservatives and Liberal Democrats committing to ensure that infrastructure investment is transparently on public balance sheet).

The three main parties also agree on devolved micro-generation and district heating development power to local government and on the need for smart metering and grids. They all support carbon capture and storage development, greater certainty on carbon pricing, and renewable generation.

However, whilst the Conservative and Labour party perhaps have more in common in terms of energy and infrastructure policies, the relative disparity with Liberal Democratic policy is most stark in terms of its opposition of nuclear new build. The Liberal Democrats argue that energy needs may mostly be met with massively increased renewables and energy efficiency savings.

The Liberal Democrats also wish to abolish the Infrastructure Planning Committee ("IPC") and return to devolved planning decisions. By comparison, the Conservative and Labour parties both favoured some form of retention of the IPC and the inherent recognition that major infrastructure projects prioritised in National Policy Statements could otherwise continue to be bogged down at the planning stage.

However, leaving aside any possible coalition deals, the Liberal Democrats are well aware that a solution is needed if ambitious UK renewable and other infrastructure targets are to be met. At the recent UK meeting of the World Energy Council, where Labour Malcolm Wicks, Conservative Charles Hendry, and Liberal Democrat Lord Redesdale debated energy policy enthusiastically, Redesdale noted that 20 years ago, energy was cheap and plentiful, and infrastructure was in such good condition that the Department of Energy was abolished, whereas today the converse is true. He also mentioned, with some resignation, that he expected that new nuclear would be built once an artificial carbon floor price had been set.

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