2023-09-04
Your energy bill?
No, "our" Energy Bill - Bill 340 as currently wending its way through "our" UK Parliament.
The Bill that would regulate seemingly every possible aspect of energy provision throughout the realm for many years to come.
Sponsored by both the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (now split up - see link) and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
(Is there more to this reorganisation than meets the eye? I note that "Responsibility for national security and investment policy has gone to the Cabinet Office". Certainly it's hard to think of a field more important to national security than energy control and investment policy)
So who is actually the controlling force behind this proposal?
The Bill is awash with regulators, licensing activities, powers (permanent and interim), CO2 capture & transportation, matters Hydrogen, levies, allocation of contracts, enforcement, decommissioning, abandonment, new technology, governance, market reform, consumer protection, smart meters, heat network zones, energy smart appliances. load control, energy savings opportunity schemes, core fuel sector resilience, thresholds, offshore wind electricity generation, oil and gas, civil nuclear sites, relevant nuclear pension schemes, Great British Nuclear, etc.
This is no minor Bill.
Click on the above image to read the Bill
I cannot say that I have read this Bill and understood all the implications - that would require vastly more time than I have available - but it does seem to me that 428 pages of legalese are not designed for the consumption of the man on the Clapham omnibus. Or even the average MP in Parliament.
None the less it would seem that there are worrying hints of the intention to expand centralised control over everything ("smart meters, heat network zones, energy smart appliances, load control, energy savings opportunity schemes, core fuel sector resilience, thresholds") hitherto deemed too localised for effective central management.
It seems to me that Bill 340 requires a whole team of lawyers in order to get to grips with what it will mean in practice.
Yet unless the man on the Clapham omnibus is able to read and understand such proposals, scrutiny of Parliamentary proposals by the people is never going to be a feasible exercise.
Twas ever thus.
