No one should accuse David Cameron's coalition government of timidity: the ambitions attached to its new energy bill, unveiled as The Economist went to press, are vast. The bill is designed to remake Britain's electricity market and unleash some ￡110 billion ($176 billion) of investment into new energy infrastructure, particularly the low-carbon kind. A revolution is required. Around a fifth of Britain's electricity-generating capacity will shut over the next decade, including a lot of old nuclear and dirty coal-fired power stations. Ofgem, the energy industry's regulator, has warned of possible power cuts by 2015. Replacing capacity on this scale would be daunting even if the country were not heavily indebted and emerging from recession.
展开▼
