Energy Policy
Over the last couple of years, Britain’s ongoing reliance on coal has been the subject of a few of my posts. Despite the “coal-free” days hype in the summer, the continued use of coal in winter goes unremarked. But the year-round economics for thermal [...]
While working on my new training offering, I have been reading about the very earliest days of electricity and reflecting on how some of the early trends of local electricity markets and de-centralisation are experiencing a renaissance. The 19th century saw a great many [...]
The 1 GW BritNed interconnector linking GB with the Netherlands has suffered another fault and is expected to be out of service until late April, meaning it has spent much of this winter out of action. In addition to contributing to a tight GB [...]
Last week saw some updates to the new UK Emissions Trading Scheme (“UK ETS”) which is set to replace the EU ETS which the UK left on 1 January when Brexit took effect. The Government has published participation guidance, and the Intercontinental Exchange has [...]
Last week saw the publication of a review by Conservative MP John Penrose into how the UK’s approach to competition and consumer issues could be improved, to strengthen consumer protections and stimulate competition. Penrose has previously called for existing sector-specific regulators such as Ofgem [...]
This is the final post in my series on the energy performance of buildings. The first two (here and here) dealt with issues relating to the fabric of buildings, while in this post I will look at the behaviour of occupants and how their [...]
This is the second post in my series on the energy performance of buildings. The first looked at the Government's primary building energy target, measured by the flawed Energy Performance Certificate. This post will look at the wider issues around the factors driving the [...]
Buildings are the second largest contributor to UK emissions at just under 20% of the total. There are two elements to the energy performance of buildings: energy is used in the running of the building, primarily heating and lighting, and energy is used by [...]
On 1 January 2021, the UK left the EU's internal energy market (“IEM”), meaning that trading over the interconnectors between GB and the EU us no longer be managed through market coupling (except for Northern Ireland which remains part of the Single Electricity Market [...]
December saw the publication of the long-awaited energy white paper, which built on Boris Johnson’s 10-point energy plan. In 170 pages, the white paper describes in high level terms how the Government plans to achieve its 2050 net zero carbon target, but provides little [...]