Tag Archives: energy crisis

Why aren’t the Government talking about the winter fuel crisis?

By Simon McGrath | Fri 28th October 2022 - 6:09 pm

One of the characteristics of this Government has been an extraordinary inability to plan in advance for obvious problems ahead and to take basic steps to avert them.

Last week the National Grid issued a statement about the possibility of power cuts this winter if a cold snap is combined with gas shortages, with households experiencing 3 hour black outs.

This scenario has been entirely predictable since Russia invaded Ukraine but as usual the Government has acted with a mixture of sloth and ignorance. The UK doesn’t directly import much Russian gas but we will still be affected by reductions elsewhere – and while there are many advantages to our increasing renewable energy supplies they are, give the problems of storing electricity , prone to problems if the wind doesn’t blow ( or blows too hard ) and the sun doesn’t shine.

So we have an urgent need to ensure we have a good store of gas and are reducing demand as far as possible. The UK has very low gas storage capacity – there is the ‘Rough’ facility, a former gas field which as used by Centrica but which closed down in 2017 – the Government acting at its usual (low) speed finally negotiated and reached agreement with Centrica in August about reopening – but its not clear how much gas it will hold this winter.