Catherine Mitchell: IGov has been advocating an institutional framework which it argues will better meet the challenges faced by the GB energy system, whilst also opening up new opportunities and enabling their capture. However, from the point of DECC and the Minister, one can understand if they ask: what is the cost of this, and is it worth the effort? We argue that we cannot know what the true ‘total’ benefits would be in terms of money, but there are reasons for thinking that they would be very large, as set out below. The framework would open up, rather than close down, the opportunities presented by an increasingly decentralised energy world. Moreover, the costs of the counterfactual – keeping going with an increasingly not-fit-for purpose governance – are also uncertain, and certainly large.
IGov 18th April 2016 read more »