30 years after privatisation, the electricity model looks to be in deep trouble. In addition to the collapse of 25 suppliers, and the knock-on increases in bills that customers will have to pay for what has, in some cases, been very poor management, and, in regulation, serious failures to scrutinise the businesses, several thousand people have been cut off from the distribution networks for over a week. That a storm could find the local distributors with so little resilience raises all sorts of questions about their behaviour since they agreed at the last price review that they had sufficient funding to meet their licence obligations (they did not appeal). This begs all sorts of questions about what they have and have not spent, and more generally about the highly geared financial structures that private equity has put in place. 

None of this bodes well for the complete decarbonising of the electricity industry by 2035 - in just over 13 years from now. It's time to get serious about the reforms in the 2017 Cost of Energy Review.

Are the wheels falling off the electricity model?

In this episode Rob and Stan look at various cybersecurity risks in the critical infrastructure sectors - and how to mitigate against them It has been inspired by a series of blog posts  written by Stan that focus on:
Healthcare and public health
Energy
Financial services
Critical manufacturing

"Some of the threats are common among the different sectors. Certainly these  large scale kind of ransomware attacks is impacting healthcare. Bu it's also impacting the manufacturing sector. You know, 13% of all ransomware attacks last year were attributed to those in the manufacturing sector. Because if your production line’s down you're motivated to pay. And ransomware attackers know that."

" think the reality is we can no longer assume that we have a landscape where people will play nice.  For example what's going on between Ukraine and Russia, where cyber is being used as one of the elements of war. And if we are in a conflict in the future, our adversary is most likely going to be leveraging cyber and will look for weaknesses in our infrastructure.  We've got to change the priority and the voluntary approach doesn't seem to work. So whether it be through carrot or stick we need to  motivate each of these operators to raise their game. Because time's running out."

EXTRA! Cybersecurity in the critical infrastructure sectors

Helm Talks is full of short, 'pull no punches' insights into:
Energy & Climate; 
Regulation, Utilities & Infrastructure; 
Natural Capital & the Environment.

Professor Dieter Helm is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford.

Are the wheels falling off the electricity model?

Helm Talks - energy climate infrastructure & more

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