This week the Government published its long awaited electricity market reform white paper (EMR) - the biggest reform of the energy market since privatisation. The fact is that we have a pretty steep mountain to climb if we’re to attract £200 billion of investment in the UK’s energy market over the next 9 years. That sum is an eye watering amount – almost the same as the annual health, education and defence budgets combined.

The crisis of funding we now face is symptomatic of how the current market structure has failed the UK. For too long, traditional energy suppliers have been happy to reap the profits of infrastructure sold off by Government during privatisation. Rather than make the right decision, the oligopoly of the Big Six took the easy one – to provide consumers with the illusion of limitless, cheap energy supplies by simply sweating existing assets and completely failing to invest for the future. As a result, we’re now more reliant on imported fossil fuels than ever. In recent months we’ve started to see that illusion shattered, with Scottish Power and British Gas hiking their prices, forcing consumers to pay the price.

With the help of many Good Energy customers, we’ve been campaigning hard to make sure the maximum number of people benefit from the investment that needs to take place. We’ve argued that the reforms must recognise the role of decentralised energy and the need for policy makers to take a more strategic view of the issues related to it.

We’re pleased to report that the Government’s thinking has now moved on – and that it has acknowledged these concerns. This week’s paper spelled out how “The Government recognises the benefit that decentralised supply and distributed generation can play, particularly in the context of delivering solutions that maximise local opportunities and meet the need and demands of local people and their communities.”  The Government is beginning to accept that we are going to have to take a more local approach to the way we produce energy by using more smaller-scale and distributed generation.

We didn’t get the full strategy we wanted on decentralised energy. But we were pleased to see a commitment to create a new Ministerial working group, chaired by the Energy Minister, to ensure that distributed energy is put at the heart of the market reforms. Whilst we still have some concerns about how the main proposals of a new Feed-in Tariff contract for difference will work for those smaller generators that fall outside of the current Feed-in Tariff, we’re hopeful that the new working group will be a good forum to address them. We’re also working with DECC around a number of related areas at the moment, including developing the Government’s ideas around community energy and the vital role that will play in future policy.

So, at the end of the first stage of the reform process, we’re thinking about the next steps for the campaign - but in the mean time we’d like to say a big thanks to those of you wrote to your local MPs and backed our call for the Government to pay more attention to decentralised energy. Together we do this.