IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/enp/wpaper/eprg2015.html

The CMA's assessment of customer detriment in the UK retail energy market

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Littlechild

    (University of Birmingham and CJBS)

Abstract

In 2016, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found that “weak customer response” enabled incumbent UK energy retailers to set higher and discriminatory prices to residential customers. The CMA estimated the associated higher prices constituted a customer detriment in the range £1.4 bn to £2 bn per year. Although the CMA recommended against a price cap on most domestic energy tariffs, the size of the detriment and public concern about “rip-off energy tariffs” nonetheless led the Government to impose a price cap as from January 2019. This paper examines the CMA’s calculation of customer detriment and suggests that it is inconsistent with CMA Guidelines and unprecedented with respect to its nature, magnitude and policy impact. Alternative more realistic calculations suggest that any detriment would have been nearly an order of magnitude lower, so that a price cap was inappropriate. This raises a number of questions about the CMA’s approach.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Littlechild, 2020. "The CMA's assessment of customer detriment in the UK retail energy market," Working Papers EPRG2015, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    • Handle: RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg2015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/eprg-wp2015.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Taminiau, Job, 2025. "Community choice energy: Bridging the gap between sustainability and affordability in electricity supply," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    2. Amenta, Carlo & Aronica, Martina & Stagnaro, Carlo, 2022. "Is more competition better? Retail electricity prices and switching rates in the European Union," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Haar, Lawrence, 2021. "The competitive disadvantages facing British assetless electricity retailers," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    4. Chen, Huanhuan & Li, Jinke & O'Leary, Nigel & Shao, Jing, 2025. "Higher prices in a more competitive market: The paradox in the retail electricity market in the United Kingdom," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 374-390.
    5. Stephen Littlechild, 2020. "The CMA’s assessment of customer detriment in the UK retail energy market," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 57(3), pages 203-230, June.
    6. Stephen Littlechild, 2021. "The challenge of removing a mistaken price cap," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(3), pages 391-415, October.
    7. Thomasi, Virginia & Siluk, Julio Cezar M. & Rigo, Paula D. & Pappis, Cesar Augusto de O., 2024. "Challenges, improvements, and opportunities market with the liberalization of the residential electricity market," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • L95 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Gas Utilities; Pipelines; Water Utilities
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:enp:wpaper:eprg2015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ruth Newman (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jicamuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.