In 2007, six activists broke into Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, scaled the 630ft chimney, caused £35,000 worth of criminal damage (by painting Gordon Brown’s name on the chimney) and prevented 20,000 tonnes of CO2 entering the atmosphere by temporarily shutting the station down. Some months later a jury found them not guilty of criminal damage, on the grounds that they had acted with the ‘lawful excuse’ of protecting property around the world from the immediate threat of climate change. This landmark judgement has inspired a number of similar acts of illegal activism since, including, most recently, at Didcot power station, where activists included current Oxford University students.

A further chapter was added to the narrative this month, when E-ON, the energy company who manages Kingsnorth power station, revealed they had shelved plans to make it the first “clean carbon” power station in the UK. The controversial plans would have involved building an entirely new power station on the site, which would use experimental technology to try and increase the efficiency in the process of generating energy from coal.

But while climate activists celebrated this decision as a blow to the future of coal-fired power stations, it raised questions of how Britain’s energy future will look. Scientists in support of such “carbon capture and storage” technology argue it is a way-station on the road to low-carbon energy production, but admit that the technology needs significant investment if it is to be viable: even the Carbon Capture and Storage Association describe the “significant technical and financial risk” which carbon capture schemes entail.

So where does the government stand on the issue of adapting the energy industry? The Labour party has promised a “step change” in energy supply, based on an “£100 billion blueprint for renewable energy”, but the specific details of this plan are hard to come by. The Labour government has so far showed an extreme lack of vision for Britain’s energy future, perhaps due, in part, to the fact that the government has seen 15 Energy Ministers in the past 12 years.

This lack of direction is all the more dangerous for the fact that many British power stations, including four of the ten nuclear reactors currently in use, will go out of action in the next few years. Already, the UK relies heavily on imported gas, yet we lack appropriate storage facilities to maintain reserves: Britain can only store 15 days’ supply of gas in comparison to France’s 99 days and Germany’s 122 days.

In the face of all these challenges to energy supply, the Conservative Party has produced a 38-page downloadable policy booklet laying out plans for a “decentralised energy revolution”. The policy, based on the widespread introduction of feed-in tariffs, would allow individuals to generate their own energy and sell excess back to the national grid. Although David Cameron’s commitment to use the “power of profit” as an incentive for improved energy security may be seen by some as the same market-led approach which led “Beyond Petroleum” BP’s to invest nearly £1.5 billion into extracting oil from Canadian tar sands this year – a process which generates four times more carbon dioxide than traditional drilling – the Labour government’s reluctance to initiate such incentivisation has only disempowered home owners from becoming part of the energy solution.

This is supported by Ofgem’s recent prediction that domestic energy prices will rise by 14-60% in the next 10 years; strikingly, the “Green stimulus” scenario, where the government would invest in renewables, nuclear and carbon capture and storage to support economic recovery and the transition to greener energy, would lead to the lowest rise in energy cost (14%), in contrast to the “Dash for energy” scenario, where concerns about the security of our energy supply could push prices up some 60%.

A recent report by the Committee on Climate Change (an independent advisory body created under the 2008 Climate Change Act) comes to the similar conclusion regarding greater investment in new energy resources. Specifically, the CCC recommends the government build 8,000 new wind turbines, four new coal power stations using carbon capture technology, and three new nuclear power plants, which together would cut emissions from the energy industry by 50% by 2020.

The strong commitments of this government to cut national carbon emissions suggest that we are at a turning point for British energy. Despite concerns over burdensome national debt, investment in the energy sector would be a significant positive legacy of the Labour government, and would help set Britain on the path to sustainability and self-sufficiency. With around 35% of the UK’s carbon emissions coming from the energy sector, the time for hesitation has passed. If we believe in the power of our society to adapt to environmental change, we must demand that our politicians take on this message of significant, immediate emissions cuts, and lead the initiative in the transition to low-carbon energy.