Peter Atherton at Liberum Capital has written another of his trenchant newsletters about energy markets, today responding to Labour's new policy proposals (if I can dignify the party's grandstanding with that name).
Yesterday the affordability crisis that we have foreseen in our April report became a reality. In response to rising gas/electricity costs, the Labour party promised to impose an arbitrary price freeze on energy suppliers from May 2015 to January 2017 should they win the next general election. Labour predict a £4.5bn hit to suppliers. In other words Labour are proposing that the supply companies pick up at least £4.5bn of the cost associated with government policy implementation.
The implications are horrifying. Read the whole thing, it's staggering.
Meanwhile, Joss Garman of Greenpeace tweets that Atherton's views are 'utter bollocks'. He seems to actually believe that investors are going to be forthcoming with the vast sums of money required to meet decarbonisation targets and, more critically, to keep the lights on, while all the time operating under a price cap! This is so otherworldly as to almost defy belief.