Featured Posts
Time to accept that wind farm costs are not falling
There has been a consistent narrative that the cost of building new wind farms is falling, with falling subsidy [...]
Windfall tax harms oil and gas production and must be cut
In May last year, the UK Government introduced a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies [...]
Why Norway’s views on energy security should ring alarm bells across Europe
Norway's energy security would appear to be a done deal, yet the past couple of years have been very [...]
Addressing the high real cost of renewable generation
Over the past few months we have been inundated with claims from interested parties that more renewables are the [...]
Recent Posts
Will Ofgem’s plans for prudential regulation in energy pay off?
In recent months there have been increasing calls for the introduction of prudential regulation in the energy markets, in response to the large number of suppliers that has failed this year. Supplier failures are a cause for concern because, [...]
Retail market pressures continue while Ofgem comes under fire in new report
Retail market pressures continue with the news that Ofgem has confirmed this year’s record Renewables Obligation (“RO”) mutualisation of £218 million, and Elexon has confirmed the proposed record Credit Assessment Price level of £305 /MWh. There is also bad [...]
A new approach to energy regulation
Today I was invited to speak at this month's meeting of the Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies on the subject of the current energy crisis, and what should be done about it. Here is my presentation, setting out the [...]
Lots of energy market news, none of it good
There has been a slew of energy market news in the past couple of days, but none of it is good. Yesterday, Zog Energy became the 29th energy supplier to fail this year. The company had 11,700 domestic customers [...]
South Australia sees negative demand in a world-first for gigawatt-scale grids
While Britain has been struggling with unprecedented retail market chaos, there have been unprecedented events of a different sort on the other side of the world in South Australia, which saw negative demand on the transmission system for the [...]
Ofgem’s response to my letter leaves more questions than answers
This evening I received Ofgem's response to my Open Letter in which I asked it to explain why it is not meeting the objectives set out in the price cap legislation. The reply was brief, containing a summary of [...]
Fiddling with the price cap while the market burns
Legend has it that when a great fire broke out in Rome in 64 AD, Emperor Nero played music (unlikely to be an actual fiddle since those were not invented until the 11th century). The moral of the story [...]
Beyond climate: where energy meets ESG
Last week I took part in a live webcast for the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment on the subject of energy markets and its intersection with ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing. Here is the presentation I made: [...]
New ways of measuring grid inertia will support integration of renewable generation
Last week National Grid ESO announced that it has begun to use a novel new tool for measuring grid inertia. One of the challenges of managing an electricity system with a large amount of intermittent generation is maintaining grid [...]
Six more supplier failures so far this week
Six more energy supplier failures have been annouced this week. Monday saw the closure of Bluegreen Energy (which supplied around 5,900 domestic and a small number of non-domestic customers). On Tuesday four suppliers ceased trading: Zebra Power (around 14,800 [...]
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