Report  |  UK energy market  |  24 March 2010

Energy market assessment

UK Department of Energy and Climate Change

The energy market in Britain has delivered significant benefits for businesses and households over the past 20 years. It is already delivering investment in the new infrastructure necessary to decarbonise and ensure continued security of supply to 2020. But the challenges of the decades ahead are significant and the Government must ensure that the right choices are taken for the long term so that the UK has the clean, secure, affordable electricity supplies it needs to deliver its 2050 climate change objectives.

This work needs to be done now because global changes are challenging the underlying assumptions of the UK's energy markets:

• the Government has committed to a legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the UK by 80 per cent by 2050 which requires the electricity sector to have largely decarbonised during the 2030s;
• technological change means it is increasingly clear that electricity markets will play the key role in reducing the carbon emissions of the transport and heat sectors;
• changes in global credit markets and associated re-pricing of risk are affecting assumptions about corporate appetite for financing projects; and
• businesses worldwide now know more about both the challenges with building and operating current low-carbon technologies and the possibilities of future technologies.

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