Energy Seminar – Week 6 HT24: Centralisation, state intervention and the redistribution of power in energy markets

Jose Maria Valenzuela

Jose Maria Valenzuela, Research Fellow (InSIS)

Summary: State intervention in the energy sector has become increasingly evident, even in the most liberal arrangement of electricity markets –including in the UK. However, the literature treats these as marginal interventions to provide incentives or reduce business risks. This presentation will argue that the role of state intervention is more structural that just intervention on price signals. The presentation will use evidence from the UK, Europe and other reference cases known for their idiosyncratic traditions of state intervention (including Mexico and Morocco) to show that we have seen an institutional reorganisation of the industry that redistribution the relative power between political authorities, regulators and the industry. The presentation will summarise a package of work collaborations from 2021 to 2023 with authors that include John Rhys (U of Oxford SoGE) and Emmanuelle Matthieu (U of Lausanne). The presentation will be of interest to scholars studying electricity governance, methods for comparative policy studies and, in particular, those asking what are the implications of the creation of the Future System Operator in the UK.

Bio: Jose Maria Valenzuela is Research Fellow at the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society (InSIS) at the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He is also Oxford Net Zero Fellow and non-resident Fellow of the Energy for Growth Hub. He works on governance and regulation of climate technologies and electricity decarbonisation. His work on electricity governance received the Giandomenico Majone Prize on Regulatory Governance of the European Consortium on Political Research. He holds a DPhil in Public Policy (Blavantik School of Government) and holds degrees in international politics and policy from The University of Chicago, Tsinghua University and El Colegio de Mexico.  Previously, worked for the Mexico’s Department of Energy, and consulted for UNIDO, UNEP and the US-DOE NREL on industrial transformation.

 

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