General election: Tory majority spurs speculation over green policies

The election of the first Conservative majority government in nearly 20 years has begun a round of speculation about the country's policies on green energy and global warming.

The energy and climate change department was one area of the last administration where the influence of the Conservatives' junior Liberal Democrat coalition partners was highly visible.

Under its two Lib Dem secretaries, Chris Huhne and then Ed Davey, who lost his own seat on Thursday, subsidies for the onshore wind farms that many Tory MPs oppose were kept in tact, along with support for other renewable energy projects.

An effort by George Osborne, the Conservative chancellor, to change targets for greenhouse gas emissions that he feared would make the UK less competitive was rebuffed.

Tory enthusiasm for a homegrown shale gas industry was tempered by stringent drilling rules that some in the energy industry said would add millions to production costs.

So what will happen now that the Conservatives are free to govern in their own right and the Lib Dems have been reduced to a rump in Westminster?

The Tories' manifesto says the party will keep supporting the 2008 Climate Change Act, which commits the UK to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 per cent in 2050 from 1990 levels.

David Cameron, the prime minister, signed an unusual cross-party agreementin February with the (then) Labour and Lib Dem leaders, pledging to accelerate the shift to a low-carbon economy and back efforts to seal a strong global climate change deal in Paris at the end of this year.

But the Conservative manifesto also angered wind industry executives because it promised an end to new public subsidies for onshore wind farms and a change in the law "so that local people have the final say on wind farm applications".

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Some Conservatives deny this heralds problems for the green energy industry.

"I think people are wrong to say there's going to be a lurch [from green] to brown," said Michael Liebreich, founder of the Bloomberg New Energy Finance research firm and a potential Conservative party candidate for London mayor.

Much of the party's attitude to green policies was driven by a desire to protect itself from an expected surge in support from the UK Independence Party, he said.

"Now Ukip is in disarray," he said, pointing to the party's failure to achieve the political upset its followers had hoped for and the resignation of its leader, Nigel Farage, following his failure to win a seat.

Still, the fate of the energy and climate change department itself is unclear, as is the name of the person who will run it.

Speculation on Friday centred on Conservatives who have already served in the department, including Matt Hancock, who signed a 2012 letter from Tory MPs urging onshore wind subsidy cuts, and Amber Rudd, who has repeatedly expressed support for a tough Paris climate agreement.

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