Jaya, can you tell us a bit more about how other countries have fared from this crisis and maybe like how it compares to the UK?

So let's start with China because it really is quite remarkable what they've done.

So as well as being prepared, as Alex mentioned, with stockpiles, so that they were able to kind of absorb the impacts of the crisis a lot better in the sense that they had this sort of cushion of energy that they could draw on.

Their renewables rollout also kind of dwarfs everyone else's response to this crisis.

So it's wind and solar capacity additions surged to over 20% in 2026 alone.

So China has been massively increasing in its renewable wind and solar capacity over the last year.

And the reason that they've been able to do that at such a fast rate and so aggressively is because in China, the state basically can direct capital to where it thinks the most important productive investment assets really are.

How do we escape from this cycle? And is there a way we can use this moment to of energy disruption to make the case to build something better and more resilient in future.

Gareth's spoken about why energy prices went up But could you tell us a bit more about the impact this had on the economy as a whole,

Jaya? So I think the clearest way that the energy price shock has fed through to the rest of the economy is via, as you say, an increase in price, not just of energy, which is a really large proportion of a lot of what household income ends up getting spent on.

And that's also a really large cost for businesses as well.

energy price shocks feed through to all kinds of other prices in the economy, because energy is required in order to be able to produce any kind of good or service really.

And if you think about a sector like hospitality, I mean, they've got to keep the lights on, they've got fridges, they've got to make sure that their kitchens are functioning well, an increase in the cost of energy is going to increase their prices, they're then going to pass that on to the consumers.

Similarly, with producing all kinds of goods, the degree to which the production of that good relies on energy, on gas, on electricity, will determine the degree to which higher energy costs push up the costs of those goods as well.

So what we've seen is not only an increase in prices of energy, but actually an increase in prices across the whole economy.

But in this country, it seemed like the main method for controlling that inflation didn't come from the government at all it was you know the bank of england raising interest rates as you've said kind of seems unbelievable how high they are now compared to what they were back in 2021 when they were not 0.1 percent why in the uk was interest rates the kind of main way we have of dealing with inflation and does it work

How has that played out?

I mean, Alex has covered there, you know, what is allowing or enabling the private owners of these monopolized assets to kind of extract quite substantial profits.

I mean, Citizens Advice came out with a report recently saying that grid companies were going to be making seven billion worth of windfall profits between 2021 and 2028, and that's to do with specificities around how inflation rates feed into the calculations that Ofgem, the energy regulator, makes in terms of what profits these kind of companies are allowed.

And this question of where those profits or how those profits get used is a really important one, because those profits could either be used to pay out to shareholders or they could be used to reinvest into the energy system, upgrade our energy infrastructure and build it out, uh, in the way that, that we need to.

Um, and unfortunately, under privatization, a really, really large chunk of those profits have just been extracted from the system and have been paid out to shareholders.

So Common Wealth did some analysis looking back to the 1990s, um, when privatization sort of really started taking off and calculated that across the kind of whole economic system, uh, with regards to privatized utilities and transport services, 200 billion pounds worth of dividends have gone out to shareholders and that is value that could have been captured by the public and could have been reinvested back into our assets.

And as we now know, a whole load of our infrastructure and our assets are creaking and are desperately, um, calling out for investment.

Jay, do you wanna comment on that as well? Have you got any thoughts?

Like, does a fuel price shock expose a weak economy? Or does a fuel price shock fuel economic decline?

I think it can work in both ways.

And it's worth noting that inflation in the UK over the past five or so years has been more stubborn than it has ever been for our European counterparts.

So that does beg the question that each of our economies has been dealt a huge blow by two successive energy price shocks in the space of four years.

Why has it taken the UK so much longer to recover in terms of its inflation rate? And a really large part of that is that we are just structurally, our energy system is more vulnerable and exposed to volatile fossil fuel prices.

So that's perhaps a structural weakness of the UK's energy system, but not necessarily answering your question about is it because the UK's economy in general is structurally more susceptible to say more prolonged inflation.

And if you're a central banker who, you know, their main objective is to keep inflation under control, their primary mandate is to deliver on price stability.

Like, why has raising interest rates, you know, been the response to energy crises? Is it the right response?

In that context, I think you suddenly have to ask the question, actually, if we looked at the price we've paid for oil or gas over the long term, including those moments of deep, deep crisis, was it better off? The answer might be different.

I mean, I completely agree with Alex.

And I don't think it's intentional that the UK is reliant on... other countries for its energy.

And in general, we are a very heavily importing country.

I think it is intentional that the UK is so reliant on markets to deliver basically everything from essentials all the way through to luxuries.

And I think when the wave of privatization was happening towards the end of the last century, the UK went a lot harder than a lot of other countries in Europe in terms of that privatization agenda and in terms of the faith that it put into markets.

And as Alex says, markets are inherently global, like capital now, as it wasn't for a lot of the last century, but capital now is completely mobile and relatively unrestricted.

Why have those attempts to kind of diversify and keep some control over energy changed? that feels a bit more homegrown? Why haven't they been successful?

Jaya, I'll come back to you.

It's a really interesting question.

I mean, I think the challenge...

The challenges that nationalization are looking to address now, or calls for nationalization, are different to what they were in the early 20th century.

So I think then a really big benefit of nationalizing parts of the energy system were attached to aggregation and economies of scale and centralizing and central planning.

I think to a degree, a lot of those benefits do still stand at the moment, especially with regards to the planning of the energy system.

But a lot of the infrastructure and assets that we have now, they are already pretty aggregated.

I know we've had kind of interventions from government to kind of save households money on bills when energy prices have gone you know have skyrocketed but it doesn't feel like there's been a significant movement away from the idea that the system is kind of best run by private companies why do you think that is and what do you think needs to change to kind of bring us round to the idea that a nationalized energy system could deliver more for people