Following an acrimonious and prolonged divorce negotiation, on 1 January 2021, the UK left the EU’s internal energy market. In the years since, the UK has been largely excluded from EU energy market planning, and the UK electricity market has also been ‘decoupled’ from that of the EU. However, given the scale of interconnection between the EU and UK electricity and energy markets, divergence has been impractical, and will lead to inefficiencies in each market. From day-to-day issues like ensuring electricity moves from where it is cheap to where it is more expensive (market coupling), to generational infrastructure projects like the ‘North Sea Grid’, the recently agreed Windsor Framework may give the political space necessary to ensure that the EU and UK can jointly plan a future energy and electricity market based on renewable resources that delivers value for consumers and businesses.

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