Within its five-year life span, this government is going to have to make sure that some difficult and potentially unpopular long-term infrastructure decisions are made.
The trickiest of these relate to power generation. In the muscular days of the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), the minister of power (remember Manny Shinwell?) could instruct the board to do what he wanted. That all changed with privatisation in 1989-90. The CEGB vanished, and the role of government changed to that of facilitator and regulator. Yet were the lights went out, the government would be blamed, even though it can no longer order the building of power stations. Tony Blair’s statement at the Labour party conference, promising a fresh energy review early in 2006, and accepting that nuclear energy will have to be part of it, indicates that the government is aware of its predicament.
Supply and demand for electricity
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