Welcome to blackout Britain

With the bad weather causing long-term power cuts, the fragility of our energy infrastructure is becoming frighteningly apparent

The spring freeze has been a timely reminder of the need to secure Britain's energy needs

By Tom Rowley, and Auslan Cramb

Just before midnight last night, the world’s biggest gas tanker was due to dock at the Welsh port of Milford Haven. The Zarga, from Qatar, is more than a fifth of a mile long and carries up to 266,000 cubic metres of liquefied natural gas. Earlier in the day, on the other side of Britain, another Qatari tanker carrying natural gas, the Mekaines, docked at Thamesport on the Isle of Grain. Both come bearing energy supplies that Britain badly needs as winter is forecast to continue well into Easter.

Five hundred miles north, the arrival of another, rather smaller, ship was greeted even more warmly. The MV Hebridean Isles, just 85m long and usually used as a passenger ferry, docked at Campbeltown on the Kintyre Peninsula on Saturday. It carried a cargo of emergency power generators to residents suffering a power cut that has now lasted four days.

Though their size and purpose differed greatly, all three vessels were responding to aspects of the same problem: a vicious blast of winter that has revealed the fragility of Britain’s energy supplies. The Met Office predicted yesterday that we will suffer the coldest March since 1983, with average temperatures of 2.9C. This weather left a combination of snow and ice on power lines that brought down two steel pylons on Kintyre on Friday, blacking out thousands of homes and the entire Isle of Arran.

The weather has also increased demand for gas, while domestic supplies from the North Sea have continued to dwindle. The latest delivery from Qatar will top up reserves, which currently last only a few days. A further supply from the Gulf state will arrive on Friday, while a tanker from Trinidad is due next week. This ought to allay immediate fears of a crisis, but energy experts predict that our reliance on imports will only increase over the next few years as domestic production falls further. This dependence could see price rises and, as we rely more on bargaining with unstable countries, it could increase the risk of supplies being cut off entirely.

On Arran, residents who never previously thought their supplies were vulnerable are now coping with a blackout. At 20 miles long by 10 miles wide, the mountainous isle in the Firth of Clyde prides itself on being one of the country’s milder island destinations. Yet today huge snowdrifts almost engulf some homes in the hills. All 3,800 island properties lost power, and around 1,500 were still without electricity yesterday afternoon. While parts of the east coast are snow‑free at low level, snowdrifts up to 12ft are blocking roads on the west coast.

Strong winds over the weekend blew the snow off the rugged, high ground in the middle of the island and dumped it on roads and power lines. Arran’s eight schools closed, one elderly resident had to be airlifted to hospital suffering from hypothermia and farmers were forced to dig their sheep out of the snow. The island’s palm trees are looking sorry for themselves.

The blackout prompted a sizeable relief operation. An extra 400 Scottish and Southern Energy engineers are working in Kintyre and Arran and by yesterday afternoon they had restored power to around 15,000 of the 20,000 homes that were left without electricity at the weekend. A convoy of fuel lorries and food vans, escorted by emergency vehicles, took essential supplies to Campbeltown, while portable burger stalls were set up to provide free fast food.

As well as visiting halls and hotels on Arran for a hot drink, islanders have been using them to charge mobile phones to keep in touch with friends and relations. Barbara Crawford, whose family has owned the Kinloch Hotel in Blackwaterfoot for nearly 60 years, says it has been acting as a hub for islanders because it is the only place on the west coast with its own generator.

“We were completely shut off, but we got a helicopter delivery of blankets, flasks and torches to the hotel,” she says. “We’ve opened our shower facilities for people in the local community to use and the mountain rescue team have been coordinating from here.

“We’ve also had a team of doctors and care workers here and people have been coming to the hotel to see them. We now have around 30 or 40 people in the hotel who are all keeping warm. My husband and I have never seen anything like this.”

Of course, power cuts will happen occasionally in bad weather, regardless of how much energy Britain imports. But Peter Hughes, a former vice president of BP who now runs his own energy consultancy, argues that the fate of the islanders, who live just a 55-minute ferry crossing from the mainland, should alert the public to the wider fragility of our supplies.

“Until now it hadn’t dawned on people that the cuts of 1974 could happen today,” Hughes says. “Most people don’t think of the state of our energy infrastructure until shortages affect them in a very personal and direct manner.”

That infrastructure is less resilient than it once was. Until a decade ago, Britain was almost entirely self-sufficient in producing gas, which accounts for around a third of our energy consumption. But as North Sea reserves have dwindled, we now import around half of our gas. Our storage facilities, however, have failed to expand, making our imports more vulnerable to short-term price increases.

“There is a fairly stark contrast between us and other European countries, which have much more storage,” Hughes explains. “If we don’t have enough storage to fill our stocks at times of weak demand, we are forced into competing with the likes of Japan and China for cargoes of liquid natural gas, and the price goes through the roof.”

Supplies are also vulnerable to political volatility, he argues. “Should Putin decide to flex his muscles, or if the strait of Hormuz were to go down and we lost our energy from Qatar, that would be a problem.”

These potential headaches could be averted by building new gas storage facilities. But Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch, says we will have to cope with more bad winters before they can be used. “Even if the Government decided to incentivise storage now, it would take some time before these new reserves are built,” she says. “We might well face another winter on the edge of our seats because there is often planning permission required and Ofgem [the energy regulator] has various conditions, too.”

Even though the Government approved a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset last week, it too will take at least a decade to build.

In the meantime, we have become increasingly reliant on coal. The Confederation of UK Coal Producers pointed out yesterday that its power stations had responded to booming demand and dwindling gas stocks this winter by providing nearly half of the country’s daily demand for electricity.

But David Brewer, its director general, does not expect coal-fired power stations to take up any slack in the future. Far from increasing supply, he predicts that coal will make up less than a tenth of our energy consumption by the 2020s as power stations are made uneconomic by the Government’s new carbon tax and an EU emissions directive that will cost at least £200 million for each plant to implement.

“In a cold winter with no wind in 2023, you would have no power coming from wind, very little coal and perhaps 20 per cent of energy supply from nuclear,” says Brewer. “That means at least 70 per cent will have to be gas.”

This increasing demand for gas would send prices still higher and run the risk of further outages like those in Arran, until government policy focuses on increasing domestic storage, according to Peter Hughes. “At the moment, we are in a holding pattern waiting for these decisions to be made,” he says. “The longer that goes on, the greater the chances the lights will go out.”

If he is right, more Britons may soon face an anxious wait for the next ship from Qatar.