Energy Policy
This week the main political parties published their manifestos ahead of the General Election next month. In this post I will explore what they mean for the energy markets. The current political landscape has resulted in a very interesting set of manifestos. The Conservatives [...]
Retail price caps continue to make the news, as "dealing" with rising energy prices is seen as a popular move in the run up to the General Election. As has now been argued many times, including in this blog, price caps are unlikely to [...]
Last week the Conservative Party has announced a manifesto commitment to an energy price cap, despite warnings from across the industry, including in this blog, that the idea is unlikely to work, and may have significant unintended adverse consequences. In his recent address to [...]
I have highlighted in recent posts some areas of regulatory reform that are needed in order to deliver the energy transition at the lowest possible cost. This is a complex challenge, so it is interesting to consider the work going on in the State [...]
This week I attended an event run by the Energy Institute on whether in the context of the UK’s industrial strategy the policy can keep up with the energy market. One comment that was made repeatedly was that UK businesses are bad at exploiting [...]
13 April 1892 saw the birth of Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, and descendant of Scottish inventor James Watt after whom the unit of power was named. Also on this day in 1960 the first satellite navigation system was launched and a decade [...]
The question of how electricity storage should be treated by regulators is once again in the news, with National Grid and UK Power Networks making submissions to the UK Government setting out their reasons for wanting to be able to own and operate electricity storage [...]
Once again we hear in the news the ominous threats of energy price caps in response to retailers raising their prices, and while the desire of politicians to respond to consumer anger is understandable, this is a temptation they need to resist. The dangerous [...]
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 the Supplementary Balancing Reserve (“SBR”), [...]
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 coal was replaced by cleaner [...]