Miliband's low carbon vision gives businesses certainty they crave

I'll admit I am yet to read the whole thing - combined the four main documents come to 651 pages and that's before you consider the raft of new consultations and action plans - but on first impressions the government's Low Carbon Transition Plan looks like a serious, robust and potentially revolutionary piece of work.

Anyone who subscribes to the view that the government is on the brink of collapse, should have been in Westminster yesterday where Lord Mandelson and Ed Miliband put on a bravura display - in command of both the overarching strategy and the minutiae of policy detail, they mapped out a vision of a low carbon future that would be more secure, more prosperous, and more pleasant.

To adopt Miliband's rather poetic phrase, it will be a future where new clean technologies will become powerful "symbols of modernity". Or, as Lord Mandelson, rather more prosaically put it, it'll be a future where he gets to ride his bicycle more.

Now, you might not like these two political animals very much, and you can make a pretty strong case for saying they are in charge of the only two departments capable of producing such a serious piece of work, but it is hard to argue with that fact that for the first time in decades the UK finally has a coherent energy, environmental, transport and industrial strategy. And what's more, it is all integrated together with the goal of slashing carbon emissions and building a genuinely low carbon economy.

Three aspects of the new strategy documents jump out - one political, one technical, and one related to its presentation.

The first is that despite repeated whispers that his department is somewhat underpowered, Miliband appears to be winning battles in the corridors of Whitehall.

He has clearly listened to the plaintive cries of the renewable energy industry and has issued what amounts to a public rebuke to Ofgem, seizing control of grid connections and rewriting its remit to improve support for renewable energy. He also seems to have the ear of the Treasury and the Department for Business, something that was never the case at the old Defra, and has secured support for his plans from the Big Beasts in the cabinet.

Moreover, this is a genuinely pan-governmental strategy and every department across Whitehall has signed up to demanding emission reduction targets and carbon budgets. Despite the anomaly of Heathrow expansion and road building programmes there is a real sense that after years of false dawn all the levers of government are now aware that climate change considerations must be foremost in their thoughts.

The second point is that technically the strategy looks remarkably well balanced. There is a big focus on energy efficiency and the electricity supply as the easiest and most cost effective way of delivering carbon cuts, with transport, heat and micro-gen delivering a smaller chunk of the emission savings.

When it comes energy supply, again there is balance with the government reinforcing its commitment to a genuine mix based primarily around wind, nuclear and clean coal, but also incorporating less glamorous but highly effective technologies such as biomass and anaerobic digestion.

Finally, it is hard to fault the government's communication efforts (and you haven;t been able to say that very often in the past 12 months). The Telegraph may have wilfully exaggerated the likely impact on energy bills, claiming that average domestic bills will rise by £250 a year. But for the most part Mandelson and Miliband managed to get their message across, making it clear that energy bills are going to rise regardless of climate change policy and that investment in low carbon technology will bolster the economy, enhance energy security and limit price volatility.

Of course, there are still plenty of areas where you can find fault.

The commitment to meet emission targets without resort to offsets currently only covers the first five year budget, while the impressive fact that the UK has binding emission targets cannot hide the fact that they are still not ambitious enough given the dire nature of the most recent climate science.

The sums the government is proposing to offer through its new feed in tariff also look a little shy of that required to deliver a mass roll out of microgeneration technologies. And perhaps most importantly, some of the investment proposals look similarly meagre. For example, the plan to deliver a smart grid policy road map early next year look impressive, the pledge to provide the emerging sector with just £6m of funding does not.

Most damningly, Shadow Energy Secretary Greg Clark's assertion that the whole strategy has come years too late works because it is based on more than a modicum of truth. Almost everything contained in the new strategy could and should have been developed at least five years ago. A potential leadership role in a raft of clean technologies has already been lost and the threat of a genuine energy crunch has been allowed to become more serious than it ever should have been.

But despite these flaws, the strategy documents have given business leaders exactly what they have been asking for: certainty.

The Conservatives may well tinker round the edges if (or should that be when) they are elected, but in many respects these commitments are as cast iron as anything you are going to get out of Westminster.

Any business leader waiting for their rivals to move first or hoping the low carbon agenda will just disappear can disabuse themselves no longer. Low carbon is the new economic reality and those firms that fail to prepare for it will only have themselves to blame.