4. A generation capacity mechanism designed to ensure energy security. Again, this is likely to be too late to impact on the need to replace the coal and nuclear plant closing in the short — and medium — term. The actual replacement capacity provided by private industry will be largely gas-fired.

5. Enhanced energy conservation measures.

While the government likes to pretend its policies are based on market mechanisms, Huhne is actually planning comprehensive department-led permanent intervention throughout the energy industries. Feed-in tariffs, carbon price support and emissions standards levels will all be set by civil servants or through new quangos. Every decision will be politicised. If you doubt that, just look at the way in which the solar feed-in tariff has fluctuated in 18 months. The last time the government was that involved in the minutiae of energy industry decision-making, it put the nation in hock to the National Union of Miners, while investing unwisely in the wrong nuclear technology.

And to what purpose? The principal beneficiaries so far have been wind generators. As is now beginning to be generally understood, the more wind turbines we install, the more gas generation we will need to keep on expensive and wasteful standby to back it up. Nuclear power would undoubtedly be encouraged by a combination of feed-in tariffs and CFDs, but the public mood post-Fukushima has not yet been tested: Germans, admittedly a more panicky race than the British, have decided to close down all their existing plants by 2020.