Energy supply in the UK – and Europe – is a mess with consumers of all types facing exponentiating price rises, especially for gas, collapse of suppliers, lack of ‘non-geopolitical’ domestic gas supply. An object lesson for the USA, Australia – our friends everywhere!

How did it come to this?

For the UK, the seeds were sown during the 2010-2015 Conservative/Liberal Democrat Coalition Government whose ‘energy policy’ you can find here: https://lnkd.in/dsRETsxe. To save you scrolling down to the relevant years, here are the tag lines:

“In February 2012 I was promoted to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. My proudest achievements as Secretary of State included:

• Leading the policy and implementing a new legal framework to enable a massive increase in renewable electricity in the UK....
• Within renewable electricity, focusing on the development of Britain’s offshore wind potential.......
• Securing a major EU-wide agreement for new climate change targets for 2030 in October 2014......
• Radical reform of competition in the UK’s retail supply of gas and electricity – reducing barriers to entry and making switching suppliers easier and faster – which has resulted in a huge increase in the number of suppliers and a dramatic reduction in the market share of the Big 6, and a much better deal for consumers
• A range of smaller policy initiatives including Britain’s first ever Community Energy Strategy.....
• Developing a range of policies to promote every form of energy security.....
• Getting the price of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was lower.......”

I guess each of these bullets is worth retrospective analysis but I want to concentrate on the impact on ‘big picture’ gas supply.

Domestic gas supply became frowned upon, thus dropping quickly over the last 10+ years, and so the UK became exposed to the risk that in the event of a cold winter, access to uncontracted LNG from the global spot market would be needed.

The potential for this to result – as it has - in paying much higher prices in a highly competitive market could have been mitigated by having adequate gas storage facilities but the very low level of gas storage in the UK was not dealt with – in fact proposals for new sites (eg Saltfleetby) were not approved and indeed the UK’s main storage site – the Rough facility – was closed as unneeded.

If the word OmniShambles is new to you - here’s a dictionary definition:
“a situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.”
 
Oh, dear, I suppose that’s a Knighthood out of the question for me!

KeyFacts Energy: Commentary