Building more infrastructure for a secure energy future and cutting down on consumption are both crucial for the UK.

That was one of the hot topics at the Energy Live 2013 conference yesterday, where panel members discussed about using less and building more in the industry.

Sara Vaughan (pictured), Director of Strategy and Regulation at E.ON told ELN she’s “confident” the UK’s Electricity Market Reform (EMR) will give the power to build more but suggested political certainty “isn’t necessarily there”.

She said: “Well clearly we need to keep the lights on. We’ve got the trilemma of making sure prices remain affordable to get the system decarbonised but also to ensure a security of supply – and that’s one of the most important factors.

“In order to do that, what we need to have is a robust framework and also regulatory stability and I think that through EMR, we’re certainly getting the framework in place. I’m a bit more concerned about the regulatory stability at present.”

Angela Knight, Chief Executive of Energy UK said using less energy is the “biggest and most important thing” and asked people to think about how to make it “sound sexy”.

She told ELN: “Using less is good for an individual because it means if they use less, they’re charged for less [on the bill]. Secondly using less means that you don’t have to build more power stations or more sources of gas so that’s a good thing. And using less, well, why should we waste energy.

“We don’t really want to heat up the sky so it’s good for our carbon targets as well.”