The future of the UK generation sector

The UK electricity industry was amongst the first in the world to make the transposition from a nationalised monolithic entity towards a deregulated commercially competitive free market model consisting of suppliers, distributors and generators. This neo political market model has now been in place for over fifteen years and in that time both the commercial markets and physical electrical system have undergone a period of continuous and sustained change. This has resulted in an industry that is already radically different from that that existed at the point of its divestiture. This paper examines the possible future development of the industry with particular reference to the generation portfolio. This sector of the industry perhaps faces the most critical period of its development in the immediate future where a range of internal and external influences including environmental regulation, imminent plant retirals, increasingly aggressive commercial markets, and the recent near collapse of the banking sector will inevitably lead to further fundamental change.