Tony Lodge is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies and was author of Step off the Gas: Why over-dependence on gas is bad for the UK, which was published by the CPS last year.
Criticising Britain’s woeful lack of gas storage is important and right but there remains a deep underlying problem which increasingly represents the ‘elephant in room’ of this long overdue debate on the country’s growing gas dependency.
As Britain shivers in what is looking like the most prolonged freeze for thirty years, the fault lines are starting to appear in a policy area which has been neglected for far too long by both politicians and policymakers alike.
Three worrying developments have occurred in the last two weeks which should concern all of those who are concerned about energy prices and our ability to maintain secure supplies and keep prices low - thus avoiding more fuel poverty amongst the elderly and the most vulnerable. Fuel poverty occurs when more than 10% of household income is spent on energy bills. It has already nearly trebled since 2004.
Firstly, Britain imported more gas than it produced for the first time ever in November 2009, with imports increasingly set to dominate supply as our own output declines. Britain was a net exporter of gas until 2004, but a steady decline in output from the North Sea in recent years has made us more reliant on external suppliers for fuel to heat two thirds of British homes. Imports met 50.8% of total gas demand in Britain in the two months before Christmas 2009.
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