Complementary Modelling Approaches for Analysing Several Effects of Privatization on Electricity Investment

Through the impacts of higher required rates of return, debt, taxation changes and a new competitive structure for the industry, investment in electricity generating capacity has taken a shift to less capital-intensive technologies in the UK. This paper reports on the use of large-scale, long-term capacity planning models, of both an optimization and system dynamics nature, to reflect these separate factors, investigate their sensitivities and to generate future scenarios for the investment in the industry. Some new policy implications for the regulation of the industry become apparent, but the main focus of the paper is to develop some of the methodological changes required by the planning models to suit the privatized context.