The United Kingdom will have enough energy to go through coming winter as has saved enough gas and electricity, and has more liquefied natural gas [LNG] coming in than in previous years.
In an interview yesterday with Bloomberg, the UK’s Business and Energy Secretary Grant Shapps said the probability is positive and high.
“The question’s not — as people were saying at the beginning — will the lights go out?” but rather “what will the cost be? The market will solve it,” Shapps told Bloomberg.
At the beginning of this winter the UK government launched a $22 million (£18 million) campaign, ‘It All Adds Up’, advising the public on simple actions to cut bills by bringing down the amount of energy needed to keep homes warm and stay safe.
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Households were urged to reduce the temperature a boiler heats water to before it is sent to radiators from 75?C to 60?C, which will not affect the room temperature, but be enough to save on energy bills.
Homes were also urged to turn appliances off at the plug and reduce heating loss from the property, such as putting draught excluders around doors or adding clear film across windows.
The report said milder weather at the start of this winter and continued LNG flows to the UK and Europe have helped ease the energy crisis and have brought down UK wholesale natural gas prices by some 70% since their peak in August last year.
UK energy firm, Centrica, also reopened in October its Rough natural gas storage site — which was closed five years ago — to boost storage capacity by 50% for this winter. Rough was closed in 2017 when the UK had enough gas supply from the North Sea, Norway, and northwestern Europe and was betting on receiving LNG supply.
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The facility will be operating at around 20% of its previous capacity this winter, Centrica said, but this immediately makes it the UK’s largest gas storage site once again and adds 50% to the UK’s gas storage volume.
The UK Business and Energy Secretary will look for opportunities for gas storage, but Britain’s power interconnections “are very good actually,” Shapps told Bloomberg.
By Bosco Agba
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