Timeyin Akerele

they will be making most profit through a market that works in that sort of marginal pricing way.

So it's a standard economic model.

It's how most markets work in most sectors.

And it sets the price.

Gas sets the price because, if you like, it's the last thing that needs to be turned on to meet national demand.

And that's why it sets the price.

And what, over time, happens is that incentivizes the cheaper generation to get built, because it can make profits under- You can make gas money for wind energy, basically.

Exactly.

And that helped us a lot in the 2010s, because it meant that gas was cheaper than coal.

And in fact, from the 1990s onwards, we moved away from coal steadily over time, because on that marginal pricing system, gas producers made more money than coal producers.

So they built much more gas, which brought down the cost for everyone.

So you can see how it's an efficient system, both in the short run and the long run.

But at a time like this, there can be times when the gas price is higher and it looks, oh, aren't we, are we paying a bit too much?

Because we have cheap assets earning gas sort of price.

And the government recognized that and intervened to put a windfall tax.

So they said, well, if you're making too much money,

We can, this sort of doesn't seem fair, to your point, for consumers.

So the government stepped in and took some of that money.

And you could argue they spent that windfall money, probably spent a lot more, on helping people with their energy bills in the last crisis.

I mean, theoretically, but the reality is on a day without much wind, we need an awful lot of gas.