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
The shifting sands of the UK gas market
The UK gas market is facing unprecedented changes, with a conflation of declining North Sea production, threats to the UK's gas storage capability, and of course, Brexit. Historically, UK gas came almost entirely from domestic production, with a small amount [...]
Energy security: can you ever have too much?
I recently wrote about the calls from the House of Lords for energy security to be prioritised over the other elements of the trilemma. With the end of Winter 16 almost upon us, and with it the end of [...]
Smart street lighting: a case study in integrated thinking
A significant energy innovation in recent years has been the emergence of electric vehicles ("EVs"), however one of the challenges inhibiting their mass deployment relates to the lack of charging points - 33% of households in outer London have no access [...]
Energy services: is it time to change how we think about energy?
Once upon a time we heated our homes and cooked by burning wood we had gathered and chopped ourselves. Later more energy efficient coal was delivered directly to our cellars via small trapdoors at street level. Later yet dirty [...]
Embedded benefits: changes coming from all directions
The much anticipated changes to the embedded benefits regime came a step closer last week with Ofgem’s announcement that it is minded to implement a proposed change to the CUSC that would limit the demand residual component of TNUoS [...]
House of Lords joins call for electricity market reform
Last week the UK’s House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs joined the calls for electricity market reform, in a critical report: The Price of Power: Reforming the Electricity Market saying that the Government’s energy policy objectives conflict [...]
Transmission charging: an out-dated cost-recovery framework distorts the market
Transmission charging is far from simple even in the traditional model of electricity networks, as illustrated by the diagram below. In principle, the costs of bringing electricity from large units of generation to consumers is socialised across users via three [...]
Electricity market competitiveness: increasingly undermined by policy choices
The question of electricity market competitiveness is never far away, particularly when any of the Big 6 suppliers raise their prices. The level of concern about potential anti-competitive behaviour by the big suppliers who dominate the GB market prompted [...]
The rise and rise of bills 2: why is it so hard to understand electricity costs?
In my last post I wrote about the increasing cost of environmental policies on the back of prices rises from npower and a capacity auction that will secure capacity for next winter at over three times the price of [...]
The rise and rise of bills: time to come clean about the true cost of electricity
The cost of electricity is in the news once again with the move by supplier npower last week to increase prices by 15%, arguing that higher wholesale prices together with increased non-commodity costs could no longer be absorbed by the [...]
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