this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2022
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This is the point that's not talked about nearly enough. Wholesale electric rates are determined by bids every day. The winner is the supplier that offers the highest price, and everyone else gets that price as well. With gas prices in the EU having increased something like ten times the previous decade average that means electric retail companies are paying incredibly high rates to power the grid, and those costs are passed directly to individual people. Meanwhile the "excess profits" of electric suppliers beyond a certain nominal price per MWh are being taxed by governments and given right over to the retail utility providers as a "subsidy." There's no requirement for the retail companies to cut consumer rates, and in many cases the generation and retail companies have the same owners.
It's a system which IIRC a certain "there is no alternative" Peggy Thatcher introduced in the eighties and now it's essentially EU electric price policy.
Indeed, the high electricity prices are mostly home-grown scam driving extreme profits of a few: https://diem25.org/yanis-varoufakis-picks-apart-the-corrupt-european-energy-system/