This article was originally published on the Energy and Environmental Management guest column.

Juliet Davenport, founder and CEO, Good Energy

Energy bills have been back in the headlines; and for all the wrong reasons. We’ve now seen five out of the six major suppliers hike their gas and electricity prices in recent weeks, with EDF Energy widely expected to follow suit.

To the average consumer, these increases are just part of the very worrying and uncertain economic outlook that the UK currently faces. But to those of us in the energy industry, they are symptomatic of a far wider problem that the government is only just beginning to grasp.

The energy market in the UK is now facing its very own version of credit crunch. Just as with the housing sector, the existing market arrangements have too long placed an emphasis on short-term profit ahead of long-term investment, placing the industry and the way we supply energy on an unsustainable pathway, in terms of price, investment and environment.

In many ways, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. When the government decided to privatise the energy market some 25 years ago, it chose to do so on the basis of there being cheap and plentiful carbon-based energy supplies. At that point they were easily accessible both through our own resources in the North Sea and on the international markets. But those supplies are now starting to tighten and we are entering a new, more volatile era of international energy prices.

At the same time, we are facing a shocking shortfall in investment in our infrastructure. We need £200bn of investment in the next nine years – that’s more than the annual health, education and defence budgets combined. That’s because the current market arrangements have led to the creation of an oligopoly of six suppliers that are encouraged to make the easy decisions rather than the right ones - to provide consumers with the illusion of limitless energy supplies by simply sweating existing assets and completely failing to invest for the future.

The good news is that there is a solution at hand. Only renewable energy has the potential to deliver long-term price security and help protect consumers from future price hikes. It’s precisely for that reason that Good Energy, with its 100% renewable electricity fuel mix, has been able to buck the current trend and hold our electricity prices at a time when everyone else is increasing theirs.

As a country we must start looking at what natural resources we have available to us to address the insecurity that’s led to other suppliers putting their prices up. Whilst we might lag behind our European neighbours when it comes to rolling out renewable technology, we’re lucky to have been blessed with a wealth of resources. Some 40% of Europe’s wind capacity is within the British Isles. Despite a very shaky start, solar will have an increasingly important role to play, just as it has in countries with similar climates, such as Germany. As an island nation we have enormous potential to develop tidal and wave technology. It simple makes sense to use those resources, rather than to continue relying on oil and gas from a faraway country over which we have no control.

The government’s market reform plans are a once in a generation opportunity to grasp these issues and really deliver. It’s imperative that those reforms deliver a new market that puts as much an emphasis on investing in renewable energy infrastructure as it does on price competition. At the same time, reform in the way we encourage investment has to be matched by reform of the retail market to encourage new, more innovative suppliers to come up with new ways to keep prices down and provide lasting, sustainable value for bill payers.