The recent cold weather has highlighted the fragility of Britain's energy supplies. Sellafield went into controlled shutdown because of the dangers posed to the workforce by snow; for whatever reason the gas pipe into Bacton, one of the three that keeps the country going, conked out briefly the other day. And our train system that feeds fuel to the major power stations in West Yorkshire is not as robust as it could be - the wrong sort of snow and all that. Add the strains on the system from increased demand because of bad weather here and over the other side of the Channel and it's worrying.
Why we haven't legislated to make a couple of solar panels compulsory on all new build houses is beyond me. Likewise some ration of panel to roof area for offices and other commercial property. Not a solution, but a contribution to one. It was not reassuring yesterday to hear a politician from the department of energy say that there was little chance of gas running out. Little, which translated from message-speak means it is a distinct possibility. There was a frightening headline, albeit tucked away on a back page, in Saturday's Telegraph: Gas to Run out in Two Weeks.
We have an open fire and a wood-burner as back-up. With memories of sitting in the dark in the seventies in my head I added 100 tea lights to my shopping on Friday, and called in for a few packs of compressed sawdust heat-bricks to fuel the stove. Wood chopping in the winter now seems all the more worthwhile, the greenhouse holding a dozen or more bags of firewood.
It is not just heat generation of course, but retention, so this weekend I have been round the house with a sealant gun fixing the little gaps that develop around windows. Small measures but effective and cheap. As would be solar panels if their own dogma (and lobbying by carbon fuel suppliers) allowed our political masters to push them properly. Instead of which we are promised a new nuclear power station in god knows how many years, something announced with much fanfare while the closure of five other conventional units merited not so much a press release as a press escape.
So the government policy is to keep fingers crossed for a bit and hope we're ok. With the fall-back position of blaming it on the previous government, as the previous government when it becomes the next government will also do. Which surely makes us all feel warm inside. Just as well as we could end up facing freezing temperatures without power at some points in the not too distant.
No comments:
Post a Comment