Decision: Market facilitator delivery body

Decision

Achieving the UK's net zero target by 2050 will require radical changes across the energy system. This transformation is already underway, including in how we heat our homes, power our vehicles, and generate electricity. This will require changes across the energy system, which must be smart, flexible, and operate through well-facilitated, accessible, transparent, and coordinated flexibility markets.

Our review into local governance and institutional arrangements started with a call for input in April 2022, followed by a consultation published in March 2023 where we proposed a new role for the market facilitation of flexible resources, to be assigned to a single expert entity capable of delivering more accessible, transparent and coordinated flexibility markets. We confirmed our decision to create a market facilitator in November 2023.

We published a consultation in December 2023 on whether Elexon or National Energy System Operator (NESO) should be the market facilitator delivery body. 

Today we are publishing our decision that Elexon will be the market facilitator delivery body. 

In this decision document we summarise consultation responses, set out the rationale for our decision and explain next steps. We will carry out further work to develop and establish the market facilitator, working with Elexon and wider stakeholders across three workstreams:

  • detailed design
  • implementation
  • transition (from Open Networks)