6.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented: June 2025 6.2 The Capacity Market (CM) is the department’s primary mechanism to ensure supply meets demand and delivers electricity security. An assessment is made annually of the capacity required to meet peak demand in four years’ time and, through the CM, the majority of capacity is secured well in advance. The rest is secured one year in advance, based on the latest demand forecasts. This ensures the grid has enough capacity available to meet the statutory Reliability Standard, which is the department’s measure of adequate levels for security of supply. 6.3 The variable nature of renewables makes it critical that the grid has sufficient flexible capacity that can be ramped up quickly when renewable generation is low. The UK continues to rely on unabated gas as the main mature, reliable technology capable of providing long duration flexibility when necessary. 6.4 Other technologies like nuclear provide important baseload capacity and the department works closely with the market to understand how the capacity provided by nuclear may change as reactors come on and offline. 6.5 The department is currently focused on maintaining existing flexible capacity to ensure security of supply, and will be implementing a number of changes to the next CM auctions to: a. Support the economic case for investment in ageing plants by making it easier for plants to access three-year 'refurbishing' CM agreements. b. Introduce pathways to allow unabated gas plants to transfer from the CM to a Dispatchable Power Agreement, enabling conversion to power generation with carbon capture and storage. This aims to reduce investor concerns about plants becoming stranded assets.