Rather than being ignored, the British energy market should be celebrated as a national economic triumph. Successive Tory governments privatised the old monopolies, but it was left to the gas and electricity industries, together with clear-sighted regulators, to work out how to deliver real competition. Gas and electricity are both network industries that require systems of pipes or wires to connect suppliers to consumers. Due to the compact size of the country, the British networks were regarded as natural monopolies that would transport gas and electricity owned by competing suppliers on a non-discriminatory basis. This enabled a wide range of interests to begin supplying and trading gas and power to the British consumer.

One of the features of British energy is the degree to which it relies on open market mechanisms to price everything from the commodity itself to the cost of transport and storage. Although overseen by the regulator Ofgem, this system has evolved between the parties themselves. The process is both competitive and cooperative, and immensely adaptive. The results have been spectacular.

Unlike much of the rest of the world, where monopoly and market manipulation still rule, British wholesale gas and power prices respond efficiently to supply and demand. Competition keeps them keen. During the initial decade of competition, from 1995 onwards, gas prices to British industry were 50 per cent lower than those paid by their competitors elsewhere in the EU. There was a brief period in 2005/6 when, during the shift from gas independence to increasing reliance on gas imports, prices rose. But they have since fallen to about 20 per cent below comparable prices in the EU. Much of the downward pressure on prices in Britain is exerted by competition between our new suppliers in Norway, Holland, Qatar and elsewhere.

The EU has taken notice, even if our own government seems to have forgotten. Against entrenched opposition from vested interests, the EU Commission has painfully pushed through liberalisation measures that are now beginning to bear fruit — though it will be years before continental markets achieve British levels of efficiency and freedom. The commission understands that an open and competitive energy market delivers economic benefit and energy security.

The open energy market not only provides short-term benefits to Britain, it has also massively expanded vital gas infrastructure at no cost to the taxpayer. Since 2000, private companies have invested around £10 billion in import pipelines and new reception terminals for liquefied natural gas. That figure does not include the much higher costs involved in developing the new supplies of gas that are shipped via those pipelines and terminals. None of these costs are passed on directly to the consumer, because the commodity price of gas is generated in the short-term market. Instead the new infrastructure costs are largely swallowed by the suppliers who use them.

The picture is different in electricity, where there is less need for imports. Within Britain, investment decisions focus on the huge expansion required to transport intermittent wind-generated electricity from remote windier spots to consumers in England. These investments are handled by National Grid, a regulated private monopoly, and will inevitably be passed on to the consumer — another reason to re-examine the government's obsession with wind.