In Germany the market prices for electricity go down but at the same time the residential rates go up massively. There are two reasons for that. Firstly coal plants can't throttle down but PV and wind farms get paid anyway through a surcharge. Secondly large industrial consumers are exempt from the surcharge. This means residential users are paying the electric bills of aluminum smelters, etc. In other words. The cheaper the electricity in Germany the higher the final price. Isn't that absurd?
The surcharge wouldn't be needed if there was a working CO2 tax or carbon trade system because all coal plants would be shut down and replaced by load following natural gas plants which only run when truly necessary.
The only thing that has made a real difference is switching from coal to gas in places like the UK. But even then gas heating in our homes is emitting more CO2 than any other sector.
Wind and solar are too intermittent to replace base load, there isn't enough cobalt in the world to build enough storage, there probably isn't enough uranium to switch everyone to nuclear.
I can't see people accepting a shift from an energy system based on stocks to one based on flow and the intermittency that comes with that. My neighbours go a bit bananas when the power is off for thirty minutes.
We really are fucked.
Government is 100% of the wrong place to solve this. And that's because they can't no matter what they do it's impossible for them to do that.
This can only be solved in the research field with better energy sources.
And it can be solved in the finance field with cheaper energy sources.
Government regulation cannot solve this.