Energy Policy
While energy news has been dominated by talk of last week’s blackout, there have been some important developments in the retail space which are worth highlighting, and which underline the need for a new direction in retail energy regulation. Earlier this month Ofgem announced [...]
Last week I spoke about how to manage the transition to a low carbon gas network at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum. Much of the conference covered the different available approaches to de-carbonising the gas network, in particular conversion to hydrogen and [...]
Last Thursday, the UK’s Labour Party published a plan for re-nationalising Britain’s energy networks, buying them back from private investors at below-market prices. £1 billion was wiped off the value of the National Grid overnight in response to the news. Labour claims the move is [...]
Everyone has been getting very excited today with the news that GB has gone a whole week without using coal to generate electricity...the first time this has happened since we first started using coal in the late 19th century, and just 2 years since [...]
Ofgem has launched a consultation into proposed changes to the Capacity Market (“CM”) rules, which aim to simplify the market and reduce complexity which Ofgem feels may be acting as a barrier to entry and inhibiting competition. There are also proposals to improve the [...]
The need for reform of the retail energy market is increasingly clear – the past week has seen the failure of another new entrant supplier, bringing the total number of failures in since the beginning of 2018 to 17*. At the same time, suppliers [...]
Third party intermediaries or energy brokers are an important source of information for companies in their energy procurement and an important sales channel for suppliers; however the market is un-regulated, lacks transparency, and may be deterring customers at a time when rising prices mean [...]
The consultation into Ofgem’s minded-to decision in its Targeted Charging Review into residual network charging and embedded benefits closed this week with strong objections being made by renewable and distributed energy bodies who see the proposals as damaging the business models for small embedded [...]
Ofgem is exploring major changes to electricity network charging and access arrangements that will affect all users of the system from large businesses to households, from large transmission-connected to generation to behind-the-meter storage operators. In this second post on network charging and access reform, I [...]
Electricity network charging is facing its most significant reforms since the creation of the current NETA/BETTA system. Ofgem believes that current charging methodology creates distortions in the market and incentivises undesirable behaviours. This is because the entire electricity network structure is undergoing significant change, [...]