Britain's energy market is broken. The most recent hike in prices is just the latest sign. There are more to come, and the unedifying thinking aloud from the political establishment is not going to fix it. We need full-scale energy market reform.
There is nothing we can do with today's UK energy market to stop consumers from being hit by even more unfair price increases. Just as worryingly, it is impossible to guarantee that the UK's current market and our energy policies will make it possible to meet the demand for affordable energy, which is mushrooming as our economy grows, our population rises. It does not work like that.
The market is complicated. Prices for gas and electricity are affected by myriad subsidies and levies. Because the market for energy is global, our government is not responsible for them all; they are also levied by other countries involved in supplying our energy. Wholesale prices are also pushed up when anything happens to squeeze global supply. There is very little to stop oil- and gas-supplying countries "turning the tap off" if they are tempted to use energy resources as a weapon of diplomacy, for example. But the latest price hikes have not been driven by any of these factors. Wholesale gas prices have hardly risen in the last few years, while consumer prices have kept going up.
Ed Miliband is right to highlight that our energy market is not working in the interests of consumers. Rightly, people are increasingly angry about it. The political responses we have seen simply don't cut it. Miliband's price-fixing policy scam would simply induce a price rise before the next general election and discourage much-needed investment in our ageing, carbon-dependent energy infrastructure. A windfall tax would simply be passed on to consumers, thereby guaranteeing further price hikes.
Source:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx6jh3_asia-global-energy-review-a-14-trillion-extortion-for-a-global-warming-scam_tech
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