Soldato
Yes but they are limiting the profit of an energy company. I cannot see justification for increasing profits of energy companies when the end user are being hit by ever greater bills which is impacting them both directly and indirectly. The French government are at least doing something to combat this. Ours are doing nothing.
Part of the problem is you need to differentiate between energy suppliers who deal with billing and supply and Energy companies who generate or extract the resource. The profit margin for energy suppliers is slim, the profit for Energy companies who generate or extract energy is considerably higher and those are the ones Labour are calling for the winfall tax on.If the french government are 85% shareholders couldn't they have orchestrated a charitable gesture as major shareholders anyway.
still a misconception as far as I'm concerned, if they had sold the energy a year in advance on the futures market current market cost is irrelevant,
50% of the BP profits are not from their generation capability.
With regards to buying the energy a year in advance, once a company reaches a certain customer base (cant remember this off the top of my head) they have to buy 12-14 months in advance and cant buy on monthly or day prices. Smaller companies can buy on daily or monthly prices and the enforced reduced price benefits these the most but they only supply a fraction of the consumer base as the majority are with the larger companies who have to buy 12+ months in advance