The Energy Act 2013 is an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

, relating to the energy sector. It succeeded the

Energy Act 2010 The Energy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom pertaining to the regulation of energy usage and markets, with amendments to similar pieces of previous legislation. The Act was gra ...

. The Act focuses on setting

decarbonisation Climate change mitigation is action to limit climate change by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases or removing those gases from the atmosphere. The recent rise in global average temperature is mostly caused by emissions from fossil fuels bur ...

targets for the UK, and reforming the electricity market. The Act was intended by

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was a British government cabinet position from 2008 to 2016. The Department of Energy and Climate Change was created on 3 October 2008 when then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown ...

Ed Davey Sir Edward Jonathan Davey (born 25 December 1965) is a British politician who has served as Leader of the Liberal Democrats since 2020. He served in the Cameron–Clegg coalition as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2012 t ...

to "attract investment to bring about a once-in-a-generation transformation of our electricity market".

History

The Energy Bill was introduced by the government in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

for

first reading A reading of a bill is a stage of debate on the bill held by a general body of a legislature. In the Westminster system, developed in the United Kingdom, there are generally three readings of a bill as it passes through the stages of becoming, ...

on 29 November 2012, and passed a vote at third reading with cross-party support on 4 June 2013. The Bill received Royal Assent on 18 December 2013.

Aims

The Act aims to maintain a stable electricity supply as

coal-fired power station A coal-fired power station or coal power plant is a thermal power station which burns coal to generate electricity. Worldwide, there are about 8,500 coal-fired power stations totaling over 2,000 gigawatts Nameplate capacity, capacity. They ...

s are retired. This includes facilitating the building of a new set of

nuclear power station A nuclear power plant (NPP) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power stations, heat is used to generate steam that drives a steam turbine connected to a generator that produces elec ...

s and the establishment of a new regulator, the

Office for Nuclear Regulation The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is the regulator for the nuclear industry in the United Kingdom.< ...

. The Act proposes a delay in setting decarbonisation targets under the

Climate Change Act 2008 The Climate Change Act 2008 (c 27) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Act makes it the duty of the Secretary of State to ensure that the net UK carbon account for all six Kyoto greenhouse gases for the year 2050 is at l ...

, until 2016. Businesses and analysts have criticised the uncertainty this causes for investors, notably

Balfour Beatty Balfour Beatty plc () is an international infrastructure group based in the United Kingdom with capabilities in construction services, support services and infrastructure investments. A constituent of the FTSE 250 Index, Balfour Beatty works ac ...

and

Ernst & Young Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a multinational professional services partnership headquartered in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and Pricewaterh ...

. Conservative MP

Tim Yeo Timothy Stephen Kenneth Yeo (born 20 March 1945) is a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he was the Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of South Suffolk between the 1983 United Kingdom general election and that ...

and Labour MP

Barry Gardiner Barry Strachan Gardiner (born 10 March 1957) is a British politician who served as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and Shadow Secretary of State for International Trade from 2016 to 2020. A member of the Labour Party, he ...

tabled amendments to the Bill to reinsert a 2030 decarbonisation target for the power sector by 2014. The Act also enables the government to privatise the

Government Pipelines and Storage System The CLH Pipeline System, formerly the Government Pipelines and Storage System (GPSS), is a United Kingdom pipeline system run by CLH. The network at one time consisted of over of pipeline and 46 other facilities. However, several of these ...

References

Energy policy of the United Kingdom Energy in the United Kingdom Climate change policy Public policy in the United Kingdom United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2013 Energy law {{UK-gov-stub

History

Aims

See also

References