IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/enejou/v26y2005i1_supplp43-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Electricity liberalisation in Britain: The quest for a satisfactory wholesale market design

Author

Listed:
  • David Newbery

Abstract

Britain was the exemplar of electricity market reform, demonstrating the importance of ownership unbundling and workable competition in generation and supply. Privatisation created de facto duopolies that supported increasing price-cost margins and induced excessive (English) entry. Concentration was ended by trading horizontal for vertical integration in subsequent mergers. Competition arrived just as the Pool was replaced by New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) intended to address its claimed shortcomings. NETA cost over £700 million, and had ambiguous market impacts. Prices fell dramatically as a result of (pre-NETA) competition, generating companies withdrew plant, causing fears about security of supply and a subsequent widening of price-cost margins.

Suggested Citation

  • David Newbery, 2005. "Electricity liberalisation in Britain: The quest for a satisfactory wholesale market design," The Energy Journal, , vol. 26(1_suppl), pages 43-70, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:26:y:2005:i:1_suppl:p:43-70
    DOI: 10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol26-NoSI-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol26-NoSI-3
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5547/ISSN0195-6574-EJ-Vol26-NoSI-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David M. Newbery, 1998. "Competition, Contracts, and Entry in the Electricity Spot Market," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(4), pages 726-749, Winter.
    2. Newbery, David M., 1998. "The regulator's review of the English Electricity Pool," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 129-141, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Newbery, David M. & Greve, Thomas, 2017. "The strategic robustness of oligopoly electricity market models," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 124-132.
    2. Neuhoff, Karsten & Barquin, Julian & Boots, Maroeska G. & Ehrenmann, Andreas & Hobbs, Benjamin F. & Rijkers, Fieke A.M. & Vazquez, Miguel, 2005. "Network-constrained Cournot models of liberalized electricity markets: the devil is in the details," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 495-525, May.
    3. Bonacina, Monica & Gulli`, Francesco, 2007. "Electricity pricing under "carbon emissions trading": A dominant firm with competitive fringe model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 4200-4220, August.
    4. de Bragança, Gabriel Godofredo Fiuza & Daglish, Toby, 2017. "Investing in vertical integration: electricity retail market participation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 355-365.
    5. Holmberg, Pär & Newbery, David & Ralph, Daniel, 2013. "Supply function equilibria: Step functions and continuous representations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(4), pages 1509-1551.
    6. Andrew Sweeting, 2007. "Market Power In The England And Wales Wholesale Electricity Market 1995-2000," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(520), pages 654-685, April.
    7. Rubin, Ofir D. & Babcock, Bruce A., 2013. "The impact of expansion of wind power capacity and pricing methods on the efficiency of deregulated electricity markets," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 676-688.
    8. Pollitt, M. G., 2024. "David Michael Garrood Newbery (1943-)," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2442, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    9. Crawford, Gregory S. & Crespo, Joseph & Tauchen, Helen, 2007. "Bidding asymmetries in multi-unit auctions: Implications of bid function equilibria in the British spot market for electricity," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(6), pages 1233-1268, December.
    10. Le Coq, Chloe & Orzen, Henrik, 2006. "Do forward markets enhance competition?: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 61(3), pages 415-431, November.
    11. Meyer, Roland & Gore, Olga, 2015. "Cross-border effects of capacity mechanisms: Do uncoordinated market design changes contradict the goals of the European market integration?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 9-20.
    12. Paul Klemperer, 2002. "What Really Matters in Auction Design," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 169-189, Winter.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:enejou:v:26:y:2005:i:1_suppl:p:43-70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.