Renewable energy has become a crucial component of the global energy transition. LCOE has been instrumental in assessing the competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, but it fails to capture the full picture of costs associated with their integration into the grid.

Increasing renewable energy generation does not mean lower prices for the end consumer, despite there being zero fuel-costs. Why is this the case and what needs to happen to change this?

ENODA’s response in full to the review of Electricity Market Arrangements consultation. We have largely focussed on areas we believe need to be amended in order to take full advantage of new, effective technologies like Enoda’s Prime. For this reason, we have focussed on those sections which look at balancing and ancillary services markets and given no opinion on questions of investment in or acceleration of low-carbon generation.

A legacy grid design, to be simultaneously reliable, affordable, and sustainable, requires solutions from first principles innovation to be fit for purpose in a Net Zero future. The total value of the Balancing Markets more than doubled during the 2019-2021 period

As renewable energy targets are brought forward to lessen dependence on Putin’s pipelines, consideration must also be made for holes in our domestic energy security, and how we can design a system that maintains stability and energy security while still delivering energy that is affordable and green. Increasingly batteries are being used not only for EVs, but to stabilise the grid itself.

Coal is political and environmentally untenable. Nuclear is politically unpalatable in many places, unaffordable, and following Russia’s attack on the Zaporizhzhia, Europe's largest nuclear plant, an unacceptable security risk. The inflexibility of nuclear power station output also makes nuclear difficult to integrate with the variable demand of electric vehicles. I worry that many countries will sacrifice their climate goals to achieve security through a system that combines electrification of transport and coal-fired power. We do not have to do this.