What links the current violent turmoil in the Middle East; the soaring cost of food and a relatively low key move by the UK government? The answer is energy and what happens next is crucial to our industry.
Young people in Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are fighting to sweep away the ageing corrupt regimes that have frustrated their hopes and aspirations for decades. We are standing on the sidelines applauding, but our emotions are mixed - unrest in this region has an obvious and immediate impact on our way of life.

If the House of Saud is engulfed and the Libyan civil war continues to escalate, the uncertainty will send the price of oil surging past the $200 a barrel price. Petrol prices will rocket again.

The last time we had a similar oil crisis was in 1973 and we were pitched into a deep recession as a result. If we go even further back, however, we can see how an energy crisis can be a catalyst for positive change. In the early 1800s, Britain was the Saudi Arabia of today. Eighty per cent of the world's coal - then the main fuel powering the growing and globally transforming industrial revolution - was mined in the UK. Yet just a few decades before such a scenario seemed impossible as there was only a tiny amount of coal available.

The problem was our inability to mine the vast coal reserves below the surface of the planet. Early miners could only reach the shallowest of supplies because of flooding. Salvation came in the shape of Thomas Newcomen's invention of the steam powered pump in 1712. His machine enabled us to reach the deep coal reserves that went on to transform our nation and our world.

That was progress. What no-one could envisage then was that it was the start of our love affair with fossil fuel and now we face our greatest energy challenge. Rioting students are one thing, diminishing oil supplies quite another. While our national press may have lapped up the more salacious and embarrassing stories revealed by WikiLeaks - it is the revelation that Saudi Arabia's oil reserves could be as much as 40 per cent less than they are letting on that should give us greatest pause for thought.

Addiction to fossil fuels

Soaring oil prices reach into every aspect of our lives. Almost everything we eat is transported at some point in its cycle. Food, poverty, economic growth - they are all linked to our current addiction to fossil fuels. But as of 2011, all our old certainties about affordable and plentiful energy are gone and have been replaced with uncertainties. Low energy prices are now a thing of the past.

Against this backdrop the Government's launch of the Renewable Heat Incentive is timely - it is a relatively small thing in the grand scheme, but it is a sign that lessons are finally being learned. Couple the RHI with the Feed-in Tariffs that are delivering a surge in micro-CHP and solar energy; the Green Deal that should provide the finance to carry out the basic energy efficiency improvements needed across our entire building stock and the Renewables Obligation that requires energy providers to source more of their supply from renewable sources and you have a formula for weaning our country off its addiction to fossil fuel.

This incentive is the first of its kind in the world and, according to Secretary of State for climate change, Chris Huhne, will help to 'shift the UK away from fossil fuel, reducing carbon emissions and encouraging innovation, jobs and growth in new advanced technologies'.

That is a bold statement and it will be some time before we can assess how accurate that prediction is with the Government still juggling a growing number of economic priorities, as we have seen with the revisions to the Feed-in Tariff scheme. However, it expects a £4.5 bn market in solar thermal, heat pumps and biomass boilers to emerge as a result of this £860 m investment in incentivising renewable heat up to 2020. If that is achieved, it would represent progressive growth economics and the creation of a credible low carbon energy market.

Just as Newcomen's steam pump opened up the coal mines and allowed the fires of progress to keep on burning 300 hundred years ago - almost to the day - so this injection of vigour into the renewable heating market is another part of the solution to today's looming crisis and could herald a more prosperous and secure energy future.

• Paul Hardy is managing director of Baxi Commercial Division