Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of decoupling renewable energy from the wholesale energy market, in the context of the impact of gas prices on that market.

The Government has introduced the Energy Prices Bill, including powers to help address the link between high global gas prices and the cost of low-carbon electricity, allowing consumers to benefit from the ‘green dividend’ of low-priced clean energy.

The Government recently launched the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) - a major review into Britain’s electricity market design. It is considering a broad range of enduring reforms, including ways of increasing investment in low carbon capacity which would result in gas-fired generation being the price setter for electricity less often, and reforms to the wholesale market so that volatile gas prices do not set the price of cheaper renewables, which could have the effect of decoupling gas and electricity prices.