In 2022, it was announced that the Government would undertake a comprehensive Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA), to assess their capability to decarbonise the electricity system, maintain security of supply, whilst ensuring that consumers pay a fair and affordable price for their energy. On Tuesday March 12th 2024, DESNZ published the second REMA consultation, you can read the ADE’s response to this below.

Despite paying lip service to demand side flexibility, the consultation seems to suffer from an internal confusion as to where flexibility belongs. Instead, flexibility is bounced between the challenges without any defined vision or evidence to substantiate where 55GW of short duration flexibility will come from by 2035. Conversely, significant attention is given to renewable generation and other capacity types that necessitate extensive subsidisation. This balance is skewed in the wrong direction. Simply because demand side flexibility does not seek large subsidies from Government to ensure its future, this does not mean it does not deserve equal emphasis within REMA. In fact, the opposite is true. Creating markets that work for the diversity of demand side assets is a far greater task than designing discrete subsidy mechanisms for 
different technologies.

The first 2022 consultation on REMA can be found here. The 2024 consultation can be read here.