Chris Huhne threatened to get heavy-handed with gas and electricity providers on Tuesday, warning that he would step in if the industry failed to tell customers about price rises.The energy secretary hit out at providers who “put up their prices without telling you for three months”. He said: “If energy companies don’t tell customers when they hike prices I will use my ministerial powers to intervene,” he said.

“In any other business, consumers know the price before they buy. Energy should be no different.”

The minister told Liberal Democrat delegates the government would insist on energy bills containing more information about the deals in the market. “Consumers can see straight away that they can switch,” he told the conference hall. “Giving consumers this information will mean competition forces unfair prices down.”

By putting more information about rivals’ deals on energy bills the government would encourage consumers to switch to other providers and force down prices, he said. The attack prompted a sanguine reaction from the industry, however, with one energy provider saying Mr Huhne was unlikely to “go to war” over the issue.

Fresh divisions over nuclear power within the Liberal Democrats emerged as Simon Hughes, deputy leader, said that “opposition to nuclear power” was an important party tenet.But Mr Huhne confirmed that his former hostility to nuclear has waned, telling delegates that Britain would have to have both renewables and nuclear to hit its low-carbon targets.

However, he said there would be no subsidies available to nuclear power companies. “A deal is a deal, and I will deliver. I’m fed up with the stand-off between renewable and nuclear, which means we have neither – we will have both.”

To the applause of delegates, Mr Huhne also insisted that the government’s commitment to building a low-carbon economy was more than just greenwash. “This government will not just hope to be the greenest ever. We will deliver.”

Not only would all Whitehall departments have to cut their emissions – he said plans were afoot for a “new government-wide carbon plan” – the energy department would also push ahead with its “Green Deal”, a drive to insulate homes across the UK and create thousands of new jobs.

He also said the Green Deal, to be introduced later this year, would be “the most ambitious energy-saving plan ever put forward”. Under the proposals, energy companies will pay up front to insulate millions of homes, recovering their investment from subsequent energy savings.

But Martyn Williams, campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said that the coalition could struggle to deliver a genuinely green agenda, given fears that Treasury cuts could hit existing policies to support renewables and energy-efficiency programmes such as Warm Front.

Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary, accused Mr Huhne of “turning his back on Britain’s green industry” and cited uncertainty about how the coalition’s new green investment bank would be funded.

ft.com