Britain’s next leader faces crucial energy challenges

Britain’s North Sea oil reserves are dwindling fast, its nuclear plants are aging and it is setting itself ambitious carbon-cutting targets that no one is quite sure how to meet. Energy may be the issue that Gordon Brown can not ignore when he succeeds Tony Blair as prime minister next month, as he seems bound to do in the absence of any challenger.

As Blair’s chancellor of the exchequer for a decade, Brown has had a hand in shaping most of the government’s most important policies. But despite his influence, his views on many issues beyond the fiscal ones are a mystery to Britons.
Energy is one of the most crucial areas in which he has kept his opinions to himself. Those who work in the industry and those who watch it have little sense of his positions on some of the biggest questions they face.

Britain must figure out how to meet ambitious goals that the government is setting for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. And the country must ensure secure energy supplies as it shifts from being a net oil exporter to a net importer.

Ian Fells, an emeritus professor of energy at Newcastle University, said he thought those questions would be as important to the success or failure of Brown’s tenure in office as tensions in Northern Ireland have been to Blair’s.

International Herald Tribune