Tetchy tweets suggest frayed tempers in UK energy department

Are those running the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) having a meltdown? The tweets sent by energy minister Andrea Leadsom certainly suggest tempers are running high: she accuses critics of lies, distortion and nonsense.

The ministerial seats at Decc must be getting hotter by the day. More than 1,000 jobs have gone in the solar power industry, with bosses blaming the government’s intention to slash solar subsidies by almost 90%. The statement by Leadsom’s predecessor, Greg Barker, that the evidence for cuts is “pretty poor” and will “kill the industry” can only have added to the heat. But should the response of a minister of state to such criticism be to let the red mist descend?

The industry reckons more than 20,000 jobs are at risk. Leadsom would not put a number on it: “It has not been possible to quantify with a high degree of confidence the impact of proposed changes on employment levels in the sector.”

Others attacked comments made by Leadsom at Conservative party conference. “There is no chance in the near term that we move away from fossil fuels; that just cannot happen,” Leadsom said, adding subsequently: “We also want to succeed in carbon capture and storage – a way of lengthening our use of fossil fuels.” But these critics got another hot response.

Leadsom’s boss, the energy secretary, Amber Rudd, used her Conservative party conference speech to trumpet “promise made, promise delivered!” about ending subsidies for onshore windfarms (now the cheapest UK electricity) and giving local people the final say. To some, this contrasted starkly with plans to give colossal subsidies to the most expensive power plant ever built - the new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point - and override local opposition to fracking.

But those pointing out that the public’s two most popular energy technologies are solar and wind, and the least popular are shale gas and fracking, get short shrift from Leadsom.

It’s a bit cheeky of Leadsom to throw the word “nonsense” about. She was recently caught out in a pro-fracking piece she wrote for Decc’s website saying the UK’s energy demand was growing. That turned out to really be nonsense, as Decc’s own statistics showed the next day.

There is a promised “reset” coming in energy policy, but former boss of big six energy company npower, Paul Massara, makes a key point, I think: without George Osborne and the Treasury onboard, any reset will be purely cosmetic.

Massara is backing solar, onshore wind and batteries, the opposite of Leadsom and Decc. But whoever is right, there is a lot at stake: energy security, affordable bills anhd tackling global warming. Let’s hope these big decisions are made with cool heads.

Note: The original version of this story suggested the tweets had been deleted after sending. They had not. Apologies.