When David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Danny Alexander meet to decide policy a compromise usually emerges - the problem
on energy and climate change policy is that at a technical or scientific level,
compromises often don’t work. Sometimes they make things worse. So, with that
in mind - what is at stake today:
1. Taking planes out of
the climate targets - and reducing all other targets at the same time
The climate act and fourth carbon budget are the main pillars on which the government's claim to environmental credibility now rests.
The carbon budget commits the government to cutting the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to the level in 1990.
The political intention when it passed was for all sectors to be covered, including aviation and shipping.
But because of people's penchant for flying it was agreed other sectors would probably need to cut by more than 80% - to compensate.
The governments advisor's, the Committee on Climate change, recently put the exact figure at around 85% - depending on how keen we remain on jet fuel.
So, that meant the power sector needed quite ambitious targets.
The CCC told the government that in order to meet its climate goals, and allow people to still fly quite a lot, it would need to 'decarbonise' power by 2030.
By that they meant that the average emissions from all of our power stations would be no more than 50g/kwh (the average emissions from a gas plant is closer to 450g/kwh).
But if you take aviation and shipping out of our targets then you wouldn't need to compensate for our failure to cut emissions in those areas.
That means that power sector decarbonisation can be more lenient and this - along with an agreement not to put planes in the budgets - could be one outcome.
2. Cutting support for offshore wind
The government's already cut subsidies for onshore wind by 10%. It may now look to cut support for offshore wind.
We got a clue on how it would do this in George Osborne's leaked letter to Ed Davey earlier in the year.
That suggests the chancellor would use his control over all clean energy subsidies - through the levy control framework - to limit the amount we spend on wind to below what would be needed to meet our 2020 renewables targets.
He could get around this in a couple of ways. One might be to rely more heavily on biomass (burning wood in power stations) another, laid out in the letter, would be to meet our targets through 'renewables trading'.
The long/short is that we could build wind farms in Ireland instead of the North Sea, this is likely to happen but its also likely to be reasonably costly and subject to Irish planning issues.
Another option is to buy credits from other countries that have been more successful and built more than they need to meet their targets, like Germany for example - if anyone does indeed have any they want to sell.
Either way, it doesn't really need to happen now, so 'renewables trading' is a quite effective way of kicking the climate can down the metaphorical road.
The only problem is that the investment horizon for offshore wind is about five years. So, those decisions do kind of need to happen now - as two of the UK's largest energy companies recently explained.
If the government opts to opt out of meeting our targets domestically, it will be unlikely to get a second chance.
3. Decarbonisation, either full fat, light, or very light.
Which could be a problem if they are hoping to decarbonise by 2030.
That's the demand of the government's advisors, the Lib Dems the energy and climate change select committee, quite a few businesses and most environmental organisations - though not especially popular with Mr Osborne.
The quad may decide to go with this one - but the devil is in the details.
The demand was for 50g/kwh, they may go for a range, say 50-100g kwh. The date was by 2030, they may go for 2035.
And obviously, as with most coalition decisions, there may be a post-election review clause.#
They might justify this by changing the overall budget (see above) or, more likely, by saying one needs a 'balanced' and 'flexible' energy mix.
After all, we may all suddenly start driving electric cars in which case we wouldn't need to decarbonise the power sector so quickly.
This doesn't currently work, however, as most forms of electric transport rely on a clean power sector.
A flexible, review based target - combined with a cut in support for offshore wind - may also run into some technical problems.
To meet the target the government needs hundreds of billions of pounds worth of investment in clean energy. But they will have explicity ruled out meeting their 2020 targets - making it even harder to meet a 2030 one.
Furthermore clean energy investors - like most investors - are attracted to certainty. If you are to invest billions in a giant turbines in the sea, you want to know you'll get your money back. Certainty and flexibility tend to make awkward bed fellows.
4. New gas and shale
One thing known for it's flexibility is gas.
It's relatively cheap to build and some government advisors, like Dieter Helm, say vast reserves of US shale gas mean one day it will be cheap to run - even if right now the global gas price is pushing bills up, not down.
The quad is likely to agree some kind of wording sympathetic towards Osborne's gas strategy. This may take the form of agreement on the 'capacity mechanism' which pays gas plants just to exist even if they are not generating power, so they can play a back up role if needed - it is also likely to include some kind of number, perhaps 20 GW of gas, which translates into 20 power stations.
That would cover the UK's energy needs, even if we don't build any wind. It is also one way - though not the only way - of providing back-up to wind. Whether the wind ever materialises will depend on the policies described above.
A second part of this may be a formal announcement to offer tax breaks to shale gas extraction in the UK - as presaged in George Osborne's conference speech - but will this be accompanied by tough new regulations on shale extraction?
5. Measures to ensure demand reduction
The government's draft bill on Electricity Market Reform (EMR) failed to include any reference to measures to support demand management or reduction - especially in industry.
Measures to promote this could make any 'green transition' easier by reducing overall demand and making the system more flexible - will the quad come to any deal on this, quite geeky but important, area of policy. It seems unlikely.
6. Taxpayer takes on the risk of Nuclear (and wind?)
Rhetorical flourish may be provided by an announcement (or leak of a proposal more likely) that the government intends to provide some kind of guarentee for investors in nuclear and perhaps wind power.
This would be great for nuclear - bringing the cost down by transferring the construction risk to the tax payer. For wind it may be less helpful.
Whilst it would reduce the cost the uncertainty over the amount of money in the pot would remain.
Nuclear is a big one off deal - there is no uncertainty once it's signed. Wind is incremental, you are asking for money over a period of decades not months. It's a very different ball game.
If you don't know how many turbines you are going to be allowed to build, you can't build the infrastructure of ports etc. that you may need to invest in them.
Of course, little or none of this is likely to be actually announced - that's not usually how quad meetings go. We'll let you know when we know what is, or is not, agreed.
7. What role for the CCC
Targets are relatively easy to set - and to ignore. What tends to have more impact is the institutional framework.
Investors in clean energy will be watching keenly to see if the government's climate advisors have been given a meaningful role in implementing any clean energy ambitions - similar to the role of an independent Bank of England or the Office of Budget Responsibility.
If they haven't, then the main source of power remains with the Treasury through its Levy Control Mechanism.
In that event, investors warn, policy is likely to remain 'stop start' and governed by political and electoral cycles. With significant political hostility remaining to clean energy policies a target without an institutional backstop could be almost purposeless.
