Energy Policy
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February sent shock waves around the world. The response from many governments has been the imposition of sanctions on Russian businesses, particularly those with links to the Kremlin. In addition to this, many businesses have chosen to [...]
As the illegal war in the Ukraine continues, there is a growing discussion about the need to move away from a reliance on Russian commodities in the energy market, which presents new challenges to energy policy. The timing could hardly be worse, coming as [...]
This morning Ofgem has announced a record increase in the level of the default tariff price cap, from £1,277 now to £ 1,971 from 1 April, an increase of 54%. About 80% of this rise is a result of increases to wholesale gas and [...]
In October, the 1,400 MW interconnector between Britain and Norway, known as the North Sea Link, began commercial operations. The €1.6 billion project is a joint venture between National Grid and Norwegian system operator Statnett. Unlike the other markets with which Britain is linked, [...]
A year ago I wrote a post about all the words we used in 2020, and it’s interesting how many of these were forgotten in 2021. Of course, covid was still a key theme of 2021, but it didn’t quite dominate our lives the [...]
I didn’t really go out on a limb in my last post when I predicted that energy markets would continue to make headlines this year – the last few days have seen a lot of people wondering what on earth is happening with gas [...]
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, unlike in many other industries [...]
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 news for Ofgem as Citizens [...]
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 regulatory mistakes that resulted in [...]
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 my letter, a short response [...]