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Paper short abstract

This paper draws on research on deregulated utilities in Texas, the UK and the EU during high price periods since 2021 to examine the role of formal secrecy in preventing public scrutiny and reform of energy markets that inflate electric bills and delay climate goals.

Paper long abstract

Historians of electricity policy have noted the role of blackouts and price spikes on electric grids as forensic signals for diagnosing anomalies and illuminating sites for public or political intervention (Nye 2010, Graham and Thrift 2007). But conditions for and expectations of public utility regulation have changed in recent decades.

While researching a book –The Energy Permacrisis (Routledge 2026) - I encountered repeated failures of energy markets in de-regulated (usually privatized) grids to mitigate price spikes during high demand periods, often due to supply constraints and/or unusual weather. Such grids -- existing in roughly half US states and the EU -- often have internal oligopolistic, opaque energy markets with frequent volatility.

The paper briefly outlines evidence for 3 types of failures: (1) withholding natural gas supplies by oligopolies to drive up prices, (2) merit-order energy auctions that allow natural gas to dominate pricing and (3) abuses in balancing ( capacity) markets.

Speculative bidding by energy traders, insider knowledge and chronically weak regulation (e.g. European Court of Auditors 2023) contributed to outcomes - including windfall profits for energy firms, energy poverty, high public costs and fiscal threats to businesses.

I discuss insider insights on utility opacity, histories of deregulation (e.g. Isser 2019; Rutledge & Wright 2010), how it became hegemonic, and its relation to the corporate state and the spread of rentier capitalism in energy (Hudson 2015, Christophers 2022). Despite legal and political reform efforts, secrecy persists, exacerbating problems of sustainability and energy justice.