Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of decoupling the cost of electricity using renewables from the wholesale price of gas.

The recently introduced Energy Prices Bill includes powers to help address the link between high global gas prices and the cost of low-carbon electricity, allowing consumers to benefit from the ‘green dividend’ of low-priced clean energy.

The Government has launched the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements. It considers a range of enduring reforms, including ways of increasing investment in low-carbon capacity, making gas-fired generation the price-setter for electricity less often, and reforms to the wholesale market so volatile gas prices do not set the price of cheaper renewables, which could have the effect of decoupling gas and electricity prices.