The state of UK energy: Where do we go from here?

On the evening of Monday 3rd June, The Spectator gathered a group of experts together for a dinner to discuss the challenge of bringing the UK’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. The dinner was held the night before the Spectator Energy Summit, with both events being chaired by Andrew Neil. With the permission of the invited guests, what follows is a brief summary of the discussion.

David Wright (Director Electricity Transmission and Group Chief Engineer – Electricity, National Grid) began with the observation that they were meeting on the seventeenth consecutive day in which coal had played no part in the UK’s energy supply, a record in the modern era. As Andrew Neil pointed out, wind was currently providing 25 per cent of the country’s energy needs, but the biggest single component – 40 per cent – was gas. The problem with wind is that it is intermittent and requires a base level of backup power.