Energy Pricing
My blog is 7 years old today! This past year has seen some interesting and unexpected developments for my business and my blog. The blog has been more widely read than ever, particularly my articles about Norway, one of which went genuinely viral on [...]
In May last year, the UK Government introduced a windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas companies operating on the UK Continental Shelf (“UKCS”), in response to press stories about “excess” energy company profits. Regular readers will know my feelings about this [...]
For the past year Ofgem has been trying to address concerns around the financial resilience of energy suppliers after half of them went bankrupt in late 2021 following the rapid increase in wholesale prices. Ofgem has been strongly criticised for allowing suppliers to enter [...]
Today Centrica announced record profits of £3.3 billion (actually the company booked a statutory loss after revaluing its hedging book, but this is an accounting quirk due – more of which later). The outrage has been predictable with the company being accused of profiteering [...]
Back in October, the Government put in place energy subsidies for households and businesses, designed to protect them from the impact of high energy prices. For households, the intention was to reduce the number of people that would be forced into fuel poverty by [...]
Gas prices have fallen across the curve in recent weeks, returning to levels last seen before the war in Ukraine (but still higher than they were before the covid recovery began in September 2021). The reasons for these reductions appears to be the fact [...]
Back in July, Ofgem launched a consultation on plans to boost financial resilience in the retail energy sector, in which it made three key proposals: Protecting consumer credit balances and Renewables Obligation (“RO”) payments: Ofgem believes there is a “good case” for insuring or [...]
Yesterday the new Chancellor. Jeremy Hunt, issued a new Budget for the UK in his Autumn Statement, reversing most of the policies in the Truss/Kwarteng Growth Plan. The Statement heralds significant tax increases for just about everyone, with several announcements relating to the energy [...]
On Monday, the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, shocked the energy market by potentially limiting the domestic Energy Price Guarantee (“EPG”) to just six months, rather than the two years initially promised only last month. Of course, the Government is in utter disarray, and who [...]
The Government has updated the maximum discount levels available to businesses through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme this winter. When the scheme was initially announced on 21 September, the expected maximum discount values were £405 /MWh for electricity and £115 /MWh for gas, and [...]