Britain’s energy crisis: when will the lights go out?

The day Margaret Thatcher died was also the day Britain nearly ran out of gas. In late March, it was reported that stored reserves were down to just two days’ supply. As the cold spell continued, the BBC even reported the names of ships bringing liquefied natural gas from Qatar, each cargo representing six hours’ worth of urgently awaited heat and power for the nation: the Mehaines had just docked at the Isle of Grain, the Zarga had been sighted approaching Milford Haven.

The worst-case scenario was that the last gasometer would be flat by 8 April, and since a third of UK electricity generation relies on gas, that would, or might, have meant temporary blackouts for businesses in some areas in order to maintain supply to homes, schools and hospitals. This drama didn’t actually come to pass, attention was distracted by the death of the Iron Lady, and the arrival of more spring-like temperatures means heating has at last been turned down, easing gas demand overall.

But if it had happened, Thatcher’s detractors would have claimed it was all her fault for launching, in the troubled final phase of her Downing Street tenure, an electricity privatisation scheme that has gradually descended towards market failure, offering little strategic attraction to investors and a potentially catastrophic absence of long-term security of supply for consumers. Her supporters would answer that a dozen secretaries of state since 1990 have had the opportunity to refine what she began — and that, as with so much of her legacy (‘Britain now has perhaps the most efficient electricity supply industry in the world,’ she wrote confidently in 1995) the benefits have been warped and diluted by the vacillations of inadequate successors.

And even though the lights didn’t go out this time, the near-miss — plus a rash of stories about delays in the building of new power stations — offers a warning of what’s very likely to happen later in this decade, especially if the recent pattern of cold winters continues.