Paul Hunt’ submission to An Bord Strip

is here

Paul unsurprisingly focuses on regulation and energy. The piece starts with some common misconceptions about energy prices before arguing the case of vertical disintegration and privatisation.

7 replies on “Paul Hunt’ submission to An Bord Strip”

Link doesn’t seem to work for me, I’m using a phone though.

Going on the synopsis above, is the vertical disintegration argument presented ireland-specific or general? Leaflets at the Asda checkout offered low utilities prices to me yesterday. I’ve heard Google will be getting involved in UK utilities soon enough. Then upstream there’s international power, who generate but I don’t think do retail. Would the Irish market be large enough for a market to form at each stage?

Paul,

This is an impressive piece of work.

You likely came across this from last week:

In an Economist Intelligence Unit qualitative ranking of energy utility sectors in six major CEE countries, the Czech Republic’s emerges as the most competitive, followed in order by those of Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Poland and Russia.

In the Czech Republic, three major players compete for business in the electricity sector and large new entrants in the gas sector are making inroads into the incumbent’s dominant position. In Hungary, where the dominant electric utility has had to make room for newcomers, as many as eight significant players compete for the industrial gas market.

http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/eb/Oracle_CEE_Energy_Utilities_Study.pdf

@Michael,

Thank you – and thanks for the link. I hadn’t happened across this study. CEE is interesting territory. Russia’s spat with Ukraine woke up comfortable western Europe (which wasn’t affected) to the vulnerability of these countries. It’s provoked some EU co-funded investment in increased interconnection to the west (via the €4 billion in total European Energy Programme for Recovery) and more is likely to come. Unfortunately, the Commission has failed signally to promote arrangements for efficient investment in energy network capacity and interconnection – so the good old EU taxpayer will pick up a fair chunk of the tab.

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