Chris Huhne told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme that the government would be on the consumers’ side to ensure they got a better deal.
He said the government’s prediction, and that of virtually everybody else, is that bills were going to go up in the medium term. But while the energy companies were not “the Salvation Army”, and expected to earn respectable returns, Huhne continued, they needed to operate in a fair and competitive market.
The energy secretary said the long-term aim was to stop Britain being so reliant on fossil fuels from “volatile parts of the world” by developing domestic sources from renewable and nuclear, but in the short run, a more competitive UK market was key. The Guardian.
A respectable profit? When providing necessities like energy, morally, there isn’t such a thing as respectable profit.
And the idea that we can replace our reliance on volatile supplies of fossil fuels with nuclear isn’t thinking clearly at all, whilst Canada and Australia supply 50% of the worlds Uranium the remainder is shared amongst some pretty volatile parts of the world. Uranium won’t be any more secure a source of energy than fossil fuels and we mustn’t continue to labour under such an illusion.