Someone, somewhere said the capitalism is too important to be left to capitalists. I kind of like that. The 'free market' is probably the best way we have of allocating resources, but only if it's regulated to within an inch of its life. The question of course is how you go about regulating it.

Energy prices are scaring the poo out of everyone at the moment, and quite rightly people are aghast at the spectre of oil firms like BP making about £2million a minute for the whole of the last two quarters. Or Centrica announcing profits of £5million a day after announcing the biggest energy price rise ever in the history of everything.

So what's to be done? Any UK energy policy needs to address some tricky problems. We've got a centralised power generation system that relies on ageing and increasingly unreliable plant to keep the lights on.  This needs to be replaced with something, and whatever it is, it needs to produce significantly less CO2 emissions if we're going to play our part in mitigating climate change. At the same time we need to make sure that energy bills don't go up as this forces more and more people into fuel poverty. And by the way, let's not forget - fuel poverty kills people.

Lot's of people are calling for windfall taxes on the large energy fims, that could be used to fund subsidies for those most at risk of fuel poverty, (or hard pressed farmers, fishermen or candle stick makers - whatever). SNP Tactical Voting rates the idea as it would handily validate SNP claims that Scotlands oil is subsidising the whole UK economy.

However, this can only be a short term measure. It would be popular, so perhaps Gordon Brown will be tempted to go for it after the Milliband thing, but it won't fix the problem long term. High fossil fuel prices are here to stay, and a windfall tax could even be counterproductive in the longer term, by undermining energy companies confidence to make big investments in infrastructure. Besides, both BP and Centrica are international businesses, so not all of those millions of pounds per second are made by fleecing pensioners, fishermen and farmers in the UK. Repeated use of windfall taxes might just be enough to encourage these businesses to move to the Bahamas.

So, no windfall taxes for me.

And on the wider topic of energy policy no new coal and no new nuclear for me either. Renewable energy sources are the only sources that make sense - they cut our reliance on foreign fossil fuels, and they 'decarbonise' our economy.  I'm with the writers of this report published today. It shows that the UK can meet it's renewable energy targets, without building any new coal or new nuclear. It requires investment in our housing stock (that will cut fuel poverty too) and it requires investment in the grid and the technology. We need to regulate our markets so that small indepedent renewable energy producers, that are run as social enterprises to benefit thier customers, can get fair access to the grid, and a fair price for their energy. It will also require other measures to help cut our energy demand, like banning inefficient light bulbs. 

These policies will increase energy efficiency, decentralise our energy generation, cut fuel poverty, carbon emissions, and our dependance on foreign energy suppliers. It would also break the stranglehold of the big six energy companies on our energy market.

To get this done we need leadership on this, and we need it soon. The pretence from Labour that we can bugger about buggering up the climate, in a business as usual sort of way is getting dull - but I wonder whether we'll need to see a change of governments before people will contemplate what must seem to some selfish buggers like a bitter pill to swallow. Will David Cameron be able to lead the country on that journey if he gets in next? 

And to anyone who complains to me about my support for the out and out banning of wasteful things, I say pah! Everyone wins - as the economy will be more efficient. That means people will have more cash to waste on pointless things we don't need, and all those pointless things will be produced more efficiently with bigger profit margins. We might even see some of that much promised green jobs revolution too. 

You see? The free market is marvelous, as long as you regulate it to within an inch of its life.

Now, we just need leaders with some backbone - where's that Milliband guy gone when you need him?