The Extent to Which Economic Regulation Enables the Transition to a Sustainable Electricity System

The objective of this report is to review aspects of existing regulation, electricity market arrangements and industry practice in order to identify barriers in making the transition to a sustainable network.

• As a first step, the renewable generating capacity that will be required to commission in order to deliver the electricity sector’s contribution to the UK’s renewable obligations is considered, together with that conventional capacity that might need to be replaced in order to maintain traditional levels of security.
• The report then goes on to consider the need for that generation to obtain early access (i.e. before the construction of necessary transmission capacity) to electricity markets and the associated need for access reform. Related electricity market-related issues including the impact of congestion pricing and the potential need to explicitly reward generation capacity are discussed, as is the prospect of having to curtail wind output due to energy constraints as renewable deployment increases.
• The scale of transmission investment needed to deliver the UK’s renewable obligations is then considered, together with the role of regulation in ensuring that investment is efficient.
• Finally, the report goes on to consider current transmission network charging methodology and the issue of whether that methodology constitutes a barrier to the deployment of renewable generation discussed.