Electricity Market Reform

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I will limit my remarks to one or two points. One disadvantage of having such a knowledgeable, far-sighted and competent Committee Chair is that after he has spoken there are few sensible contributions left to make. I will, therefore, confine my remarks to one or two less sensible points, which I hope will add something to the debate.

In the Green Paper, and certainly in the subsequent White Paper published after the Committee’s report, one must look a long way to find comments on electricity market reform. Although the White Paper addresses a range of topics, such as capacity, the carbon floor price and energy performance standards, its central oddity is that it leaves the electricity markets as they were designed 10 years ago under NETA—the new electricity trading arrangements. It leaves the electricity markets in pretty much the same place, with the same assumptions and mechanisms. However, it countenances a very different landscape as far as electricity trading is concerned.

When NETA was set up, there was a substantial number of wholesalers selling and retailers buying. That is no longer remotely the case—not by conspiracy, but through the accretion of suppliers, generators and retailers into the big six. By accident, what has come about is, in effect, a cartel—we have to say that—that essentially hedges, using the strategies that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) mentioned: it buys on the futures market and sells to itself, using the same market mechanisms, and therefore pretty much bypasses most of the things that NETA was originally set up to do.

When NETA was set up 10 years ago, it was carbon-blind. Its purpose was to secure, among other things, the cheapest price between wholesale and retail. In the early stages, it looked as though it was substantially succeeding in doing that, until other factors took over. However, there was the emergence of what one might call the other things that are central to the electricity market reform White Paper. To some extent, they were mechanisms that mediated that central electricity market. The renewables obligation, for example, was a mechanism attached to the original NETA/BETTA system to bring renewables to market; to underpin emerging technologies; and, in an echo of the recent debate on feed-in tariffs for solar photovoltaics, to recognise that over time the obligations may change as the technologies come to market. Nevertheless, the aim was to underpin those technologies in the first place.

Now, as hon. Members have said, we need to decarbonise our electricity market rapidly and invest substantially, not just in replacing capacity but in providing additional capacity, because of the nature of the capacity that we are bringing on board as far as the low-carbon market is concerned. We are talking about perhaps £200 billion in investment. All but two of the big six companies have pretty much borrowed up to the limit of their balance sheets, so we need important mechanisms to secure not just the good running of the market, but low-carbon investment on the basis of good value for customers. I do not underestimate at all the breadth of the challenge implied by the electricity market reforms.

There are various things in the reform. The central electricity market remaining must have a substantial question mark against it, with regard to whether it is fit for purpose as one of the central mechanisms driving all the demands forward. I think—evidence was submitted to the Select Committee on this—that a single purchaser pool of some description is a necessary way of dealing with the issues of cartelisation and the lack of transparency in the wholesale market that has emerged. There must also be a question mark against the contract for difference as set out in the White Paper.

[Barry Gardiner]

I absolutely agree with what my hon. Friend is saying. Will he say something about liquidity and the ability of smaller companies to enter the market with regard to the changes that he is discussing?

[Dr Whitehead]

My hon. Friend has just stressed that point. Given that I have about one minute left, expatiating on liquidity to any great extent is probably beyond my abilities. However, he is absolutely right to raise the question of liquidity in the market and the fact that as a result of the lack of liquidity, small companies are pretty much shut out from gaining a foothold in the market. Whatever is done about the big six, that is a very important issue.

Finally, I want to emphasise two things. First, the contract for difference as currently proposed conflates mature technology, the overall costs of which will not change, with emerging technology, where costs may well change. That is to say, it rewards, and particularly in the future will reward, old nuclear technology, as well as new nuclear power stations, for their output. That seems—the Committee alluded to this—a considerable concern, given the pronouncements that continue to be made that the Government are in favour of new nuclear but with no public subsidy. It is necessary at this stage to say either that there will be no public subsidy—that nuclear will not be rewarded for being a mature technology in the way that emerging technologies are, but will take its chance in the market—or that we need to do something about public subsidies for nuclear, for reasons that may be perfectly honourable to consider, and we must be up front and deal with that. Electricity market reform continues to fudge that essential choice that we have to make.

Secondly, we have to enter into capacity payments with a clear understanding of demand-side analysis, which is substantially missing from the proposals in the electricity market reform White Paper. We need to consider capacity payments for energy efficiency and reduction in output, and in relation to things such as interconnectors and electricity storage, which will be an essential part of a balanced, very low carbon economy that takes serious account of the demand side as well as the supply side.

Trying to deal with the entire landscape of electricity market reform in eight minutes flat was a difficult challenge. I hope that I have contributed a few thoughts to the debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s response to a number of issues that hon. Members and I have raised.

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I hope that we can give the Minister and Mr Yeo sufficient time to respond to the debate.