When parliament resumes, roughly a third of all MPs will be taking their seats in Westminster for the first time.

The key question now is, what are their views on the issues that matter? What do they believe needs to be done to tackle climate change?

How do they think the government should encourage people to move towards a low-carbon lifestyle?

What do they believe should be for the government to decide and what should be left to the market to deliver?

Of course, all of these questions will be framed by the backdrop of the largest budget deficit since the Second World War; this is something that will obviously restrict ministers’ ability to use public funding to implement policy.

That means there will be more competition between Whitehall departments for what money is available, so the twin issues of energy and climate change will need more allies and champions in parliament than ever.

Good Energy will be working hard to identify the new generation of champions and be seeking to build new relationships with them once parliament returns in a few weeks’ time.

In recent years, those of us having to deal with government policymaking first hand have grown used to dealing with successive administrations with comfortable majorities.

On the one hand this has meant that there has been a greater degree of certainty about policy implementation, but on the other it has meant policy has more often than not been dealt with through procedure and bureaucracy rather than through politics.

A Conservative- LibDem coalition government completely changes this situation. Ministers will have to pay far more attention to the concerns of individual MPs in order to woo their support and get proposals passed.

The government will have to work harder to ensure that frontbench policy is broadly aligned with the range of opinions amongst backbench MPs by providing concessions in some areas of policy in order to get other proposals passed.

So what does this mean for Good Energy’s campaigning efforts in Westminster? Well, it means that there will be a more diverse, vibrant debate around the issues that affect Good Energy’s customers and generators.

And it will mean less certainty in policymaking. We can expect to see weeks of hard work by civil servants undone by a single vote in parliament if the minister responsible hasn’t done his or her homework on the probability of their proposals being passed.

But with this political risk comes opportunity and with that, Good Energy’s work in building relationships with politicians across the political spectrum becomes all the more valuable.

There is greater scope for building networks of supportive MPs on key issues who can act as a important force in the debate in Westminster, and it is those individuals that the government will have to spend more time and effort paying attention to in order to push through their policy programmes.

Regardless of their views on climate change and man’s contribution to it, most business leaders agree on one point – as fossil fuels get scarcer and the UK decarbonises our economy, our energy prices will continue to rise.

The UK’s recent cold snap gave us a foretaste of what we could be in for – with some businesses having their gas supplies cut to relieve pressure on pipelines – although it appears that the widely reported claim that the UK had just eight days’ gas supply left was political bluster and scaremongering.

The Department of Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform’s 2008 Energy Markets Outlook projects that the UK could rely on imports for 80 percent of its gas needs by 2020, with huge implications for cost and energy security – and that income pouring out of the country.  And the International Energy Association forecasts serious energy “crunches” occurring within the next 10 years.

As all effective CEOs know, good business isn’t just about keeping your costs down, it’s about forecasting your costs with a degree of certainty.

When it comes to energy, investing in decentralised renewable generation doesn’t just give businesses good environmental credentials – increasingly important for today’s consumers – but control over their energy costs, with accompanying financial and competitive benefits.

Such investments – where the fuel, be it wind, sunshine, biomass or water, is effectively free – can enable a firm to set its energy prices with relative certainty for the next 20 years, providing an effective hedge against the unpredictable gas and electricity markets.

So, it’s not surprising then that the UK’s more enlightened and forward thinking businesses are taking steps now to safeguard their future energy security, by investing in their own renewable generation capacity.

BT is a prime example: its wind farm initiative, Wind for change, claims to be the UK’s biggest corporate green energy project outside the energy sector. It’s aiming to meet a quarter of its very large electricity needs from renewables by 2016 – that’d be enough to power 122,000 homes.

But it isn’t just the big behemoths that are sitting up and taking notice. Among Good Energy’s community of over 1000 independent generators are several small businesses who recognise that generating their own power makes sound commercial sense.

For example, Mackie’s, an ice cream manufacturer based in Aberdeenshire, has three wind turbines generating 7,500 MWh a year – the equivalent to powering 2,000 homes.  This powers their factory and provides them with an additional income from their land for power that they export.

And what is good business sense, is good for the economy too. We’ve been hearing lots lately about how the green sector is going to lead the UK out of recession.

A recent report from the Renewable Energy Association strengthens the case for green economic investment by crunching some numbers – it forecasts that by 2020 the UK’s trade balance could benefit to the tune of 12.6 billion pounds a year simply by implementing better energy efficiency and investment in renewables.

Worth thinking about?  Rather than British Steel or British Coal – we should start thinking about British Wind and British Sun as a future resource base for the UK – it’s a shame to waste cash from UK industry on someone else’s oil and gas.