Liz Truss’s big-bucks energy plan notable for what it lacks

theguardian.com:

After three days in office, Liz Truss’s administration could not be expected to have every detail of its big-bucks energy strategy nailed down. Even so, the striking feature – beyond the well-trailed two-year price cap for households – was how much has been filed under “to do” or “details to follow”. At least six areas of the canvas are virtually blank.

First, six months of “equivalent” support for businesses, public sector bodies and charities inevitably prompts the question of what happens in April. On what basis will deserving causes for ongoing help be selected?

Second, negotiations with electricity generators – mainly nuclear power plants and wind and solar projects – to reduce their prices seem barely to have started. The principle of switching firms to contracts-for-difference is fine (for reasons discussed in this column previously) but success will be determined solely by how low prices can be made to fall.

With wholesale prices at £400-ish per megawatt hour, some generators’ windfall profits will be enormous. Would a good outcome for taxpayers be a contracted price close to £40, which is roughly where the last capacity auction came out?

Or, given that lucrative old-style “renewables obligations certificates” have obvious value, are we talking £100 as a realistic goal? The difference matters hugely if new contracts could run as long as 15 years.

Ministers can’t negotiate in public but it’s hard to detect any sense that the Treasury itself knows where it is aiming. The scheme, in essence, is the alternative to Labour’s idea for an extended windfall tax and ministers must be muscular: this should be a “negotiation” in the sense that generators are told, more or less, the definition of a fair price.

Third, will the