The Carbon Market Time Bomb | Free the Power

Join us for the second episode of "Free the Power," the IEA series exploring market-based solutions to the UK's energy challenges. Host Andy Mayer sits down with Nicholas Leighton-Hall, Energy Consultant and Author of The Marginal Cost of Everything SubStack, to examine the UK's problematic emissions trading scheme.

In this revealing discussion, Leighton-Hall exposes how the UK's post-Brexit carbon market has created a "structural fragility" for British industry. He explains how financial institutions with "deep pockets" can corner this artificially constrained market, potentially driving carbon prices to £100 per tonne and adding £50 per megawatt hour to electricity costs. Leighton-Hall warns this system is making UK energy "prohibitively expensive" while failing to achieve efficient decarbonization.

This is the second instalment of our series examining energy policies through a free market lens. Subscribe to catch future episodes featuring leading thinkers who challenge conventional wisdom on market interventions, government price controls, and sustainable energy economics. Can the UK fix its broken carbon market, or will political manipulation of energy markets lead to economic disaster?

The Institute of Economic Affairs is an educational charity, it does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

Get full access to Institute of Economic Affairs | Insider at insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe