UK Electricity Market Reform—revolution or much ado about nothing?

The UK Government has published a White paper on Electricity Market Reform, which precedes legislation with a declared aim of delivering secure, clean and decarbonised electricity supply. It introduces interventionist methods aiming to promote a nuclear power construction programme, a streamlined renewables programmes and a system to ensure that generation capacity is built to cope with variability in electricity output. However, the policies announced to date are likely to fail in delivering the promised nuclear programme and the system of ‘feed-in tariffs’ announced for renewables is stunted and made less efficient by a desire to integrate it with the prevailing electricity market arrangements. The effect of the changes in the White Paper is likely to be incremental rather than revolutionary.