🌬️⚡Every time electricity bills surge, politicians deliver the same well-rehearsed explanation: “It’s the market.” Wind, solar, nuclear, gas — all bundled together under a pricing system that lets the most expensive power source set the price for everything. And since gas plants are usually the priciest generator needed to meet demand, guess what determines your electricity bill?
Gas. Even when your electricity came from wind spinning over a hill or sunlight bouncing off a solar panel.
But here’s the awkward bit nobody seems eager to dwell on: this system didn’t fall from the sky. It was designed. By governments.
🎭 The Curious Case of the “Untouchable” System
Britain’s electricity market is often spoken about like the weather — unpredictable, complex, impossible to control. Yet it’s actually a set of policy decisions overseen by regulators like Ofgem and operated through the grid managed by National Grid ESO.
The rules determine how electricity is bought, sold, and priced.
And under those rules, electricity from a wind farm with no fuel costs can be priced as if it came from a gas plant burning expensive imported fuel. Because the system pays everyone the price of the most expensive generator needed to meet demand.
Economists call it marginal pricing. Ordinary people call it utterly baffling.
Politicians explain this frequently. In fact, they’ve become quite good at explaining it.
What they’ve been noticeably less enthusiastic about is changing it.
Governments rewrite rules for entire industries all the time. Banking regulations, rail franchising, telecoms competition, environmental standards — all reshaped by legislation when political will exists.
Compared with those upheavals, redesigning electricity market pricing is hardly revolutionary. Parliament could instruct regulators to separate renewable electricity from fossil fuel pricing. It could establish a renewable market where wind and solar are priced according to their actual production costs. It could restructure the system so consumers benefit when cheap generation is abundant.
None of that requires a miracle invention.
It requires a vote.
Yet the conversation often ends where it began: with an explanation.
“We’re tied into the market.”
“It’s global energy prices.”
“These systems are complicated.”
All true. None answers the real question.
Markets are tools created by policy. They are not acts of nature.
So when elected officials repeatedly say the system produces outcomes they themselves admit are flawed, the obvious follow-up becomes unavoidable.
If the rules are the problem…
why haven’t the people who write the rules changed them?
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Challenges
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Here’s the uncomfortable thought experiment: imagine running a football match where the referee openly admits the rules produce unfair results… and then refuses to change them. Would fans tolerate it?
So what’s going on here? Is it inertia, political caution, energy-market lobbying, or simply the comforting habit of blaming “the system” instead of rewriting it?
Drop your take in the blog comments — not just on social media.
Who benefits from the current setup? Who loses? And should MPs stop explaining the problem and start fixing it?
👇 Comment. Like. Share. Stir the debate.
The sharpest, funniest, and most brutal comments will be featured in the next issue of the magazine. 📝🔥
Chameleon Magazine 
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