It is in large part because the UK made infrastructure decisions that essentially couple their electricity prices to the price of natural gas.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-why-does-gas-set-the-price-of...

https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/65515/decoupling-...

It is very strange to see how many nations gave up energy independence and basically exchanged a temporarily lower price of energy coupled with deep geopolitical dependencies outside the nation. Money seems politically easy to spend raising defense expenditures by a few more percent of GDP but energy independence through decentralized renewables would be a much higher defense value imho. And it would actually propel more economic activity.

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gadders 12 hours ago | parent [-]

>>deep geopolitical dependencies outside the nation.

They are only deep geopolitical dependencies because our politicians are too stupid to actually let us drill for it in the North Sea or frack for it on the mainland.

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dv_dt 11 hours ago | parent [-]

The article claims that gas prices are set by international markets that are willing to bid up prices and the small added contribution from the North sea is not going to swing prices significantly. The US is going through a similar delusion that they produce enough domestically to protect is Diesel prices - they don't and the oil companies are not going to forgo international markets

	▲	gadders 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>> The article claims that gas prices are set by international markets that are willing to bid up prices and the small added contribution from the North sea is not going to swing prices significantly. Argue what you like, but it's hard to think that increasing the supply of a commodity won't make the prices go down. Will it be major? Probably not compared to the massive amount of tax on fuel, but I'd still take it.