The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has warned that the political “opportunism is trumping pragmatism” on UK energy, undermining business confidence in the sector.
The CBI surveyed 443 senior business leaders and found that 67% of them expected the UK’s energy infrastructure to worsen in the next five years.
When asked to identify the cause of their pessimism, almost all of those surveyed (96%) said that political uncertainty is discouraging investment with 93% saying that political rhetoric was undermining confidence.
The report states that “opportunism is trumping pragmatism and short-term thinking risks undermining long-term investment. While we cannot expect to completely take the politics out of energy, given its huge national importance, we need our politicians to keep an eye on the long-term prize and maintain the trust and confidence of industry”.
Eight of 10 respondents said that their firm was factoring in fears about future energy security into their investment decisions now, with 74% saying that escalating energy bills were also a factor in future decision making.
Commenting on the report, Katja Hall, CBI deputy-director-general, said: “Progress on infrastructure has been a case of two steps forward and three steps back for far too long. While the policy environment has improved, businesses still don’t see upgrades to mission-critical parts of our infrastructure on the ground in practice – and don’t expect to anytime soon.
“Where hard decisions have been taken on issues like energy, populist political rhetoric threatens to send us backwards. Just recently National Grid warned that spare capacity margins are at the lowest level in seven years, so building up investor confidence couldn’t be more important.
“We’re at a crossroads. The next government must build on the successful policies of this Parliament, but we also need to see bold thinking and a renewal of the politics of infrastructure, finding a new way to agree upon and then consistently deliver the improvements we’ll need over the next fifty years – not just the next five.”
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