This year's lecture will highlight the national strategic planning work of the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) which has been peer reviewed as internationally leading and targets 'lowest cost' as the number one goal for design of any future UK energy system. Using outputs from ETI's national planning work together with the results from the ETI's current £133m investment in technology development and demonstration projects, the potential direction, cost and necessary timing of future UK energy policy decisions will be addressed and the importance shown of integrating the 4 key areas of power, heat, transport and infrastructure in any future policy.