Column Looking for energetic leadership

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: short-termism, vested interests and the electoral cycle. It can be the energy ombudsman of the country.

There are three reasons why I believe you should be the ‘champion’. First, your speech made clear that you regarded ‘energy security’ as a ‘people centred’ issue and not one for political gamesmanship. Second, you have decades ahead in public life. You can push for decisions today in the confident expectation that you will be around in public life well after most of your critics have left the scene. And that in time (and, possibly, from the vantage point of executive authority) you will be able to look back and declaim with satisfaction that your initiatives did indeed transform the lives of Kalawati and her children. And third, you are the legatee of a political lineage that no one can ignore. Whether in power or not, your voice will be heard.

I believe that the country cannot afford a repeat of the controversies that have surrounded the 123 agreement. We all know that it will take decades to reconfigure our vast and complex energy system. Plans that are approved today will take tangible shape years hence. The nuclear deal will make a meaningful contribution to our energy basket only sometime around 2020. We also know that energy security is our route to carbon abatement. Most of the measures related to energy security like energy efficiency, demand conservation, renewables, biofuels and nuclear are positives for climate change. We cannot, of course, accept limits on carbon emissions but at the same time we cannot allow our economy to get locked onto a high carbon pathway. For we know that global warming will impact our socio-economy disproportionately hard. It is because of these twin factors—the lengthy timescales involved in building a new energy supply infrastructure and the urgency to mitigate carbon emissions—that fractious politics must not be allowed to stymie further progress on energy security.

In suggesting that you be the champion of energy security and that you leverage the multiple skills of a body of experts, I am hopeful that you will dispel this reluctance to focus on the “how”. I am also hopeful that by asking the right questions and by coming up with bold and pragmatic answers, you will help bridge the gap between the rhetoric of intent and reality of action.