in all these cases private foresight is not sufficient to internalise the impacts of a supply interruption and public action is warranted one can attribute this need for public intervention to the existence of informational asymmetries or transaction costs one aspect of this is that in technical terms energy supply risks do not follow a welldefined probability distribution function that would let private insurance markets take care of the issue another aspect of the issue is that the action of one actor in an energy system impacts the wellbeing or profitability of another without taking this impact into account frequently this is unavoidable for technical reasons gas and electricity are gridbound and even oil and coal use common infrastructures such as dedicated ports shipping lanes etc