UK Government Makes Push For Cheaper Gas and Electricity

The UK government is now looking to shape up the energy industry just a bit. They hope by doing this they can stimulate competition and make gas and electricity cheaper for consumers around all of the UK. According to Whitehall, anti-competitive practices are pushing up the wholesale prices by hundreds of millions of pounds.

The energy and climate change secretary, Ed Miliband, said that Ofgem, who is the energy regulator, would be given greater powers. This would include new financial penalties, which would give it the power to make these energy companies actually listen to their warnings.

Ofgem said that stronger rights would give it the power to be able to tackle the abuse of the wholesale electricity market. This abuse could already be costing the UK hundreds of millions of pounds a year in electricity costs. This is very bad, especially when compared to how bad the economy is right now.

Ed Miliband went on to say that the people who are considering switching their electricity supplier may be interested to hear that energy prices will not go up, because the cost of migrating to a green energy infrastructure won’t come until 2015.

However, between 2010 and 2020 the climate change secretary does note that the prices of power could climb by an average of about six percent. This would bring the average cost up about £75 a year. Experts say that this is why the UK government has to get involved and make sure that energy suppliers do not keep raising the cost of wholesale power. Without any competition, the energy suppliers are free to make the price of gas and power as high as they want.