Saturday, 17 January 2015

It's Not Price, It's Capacity

Let me remind you of this. In their dash for populist headlines about the poor British consumer being robbed by wicked utility companies our dear leaders seem to have forgotten that there is a need for investment - in new generation capacity, in distribution and transmission hardware, in control systems. Companies will only do this if they see that they will be able to make a decent return on that investment. Kicking them because they don't follow spot market prices down (notice that there's never an exhortation to follow them up!) won't help that situation. (And those self same politicians seem to overlook the fact that energy tends to be bought forward on long term contracts - a good way of reducing volatility - but, of course, not immediately reflective of spot prices).

It's capacity that matters - not the consumer's bill.

(Oh, and perhaps someone could look up the meaning of "crisis" before chuntering on about "the cost of living crisis").

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