An issue that we hear about increasingly is energy security. The oxymorons in government broke off a bit of DBEIS (they liked to call it “Bays” rather than “debase” for some reason) to form DESNZ, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, whose titular motives are firmly at cross purposes. The mooted successor is supposedly DUNCE, the Department for Unicorns and No-Carbon Energy. (Whenever I see DESNZ written down, my brain makes a connection to the word “denazify,” but that’s just me I guess.) My advice to our government is that renaming things generally does not help. It just confuses everyone. MAFF survived for a long time (50 years?) before there was DEFRA. After that, departments have split and merged and been renamed at an accelerating rate, almost as if making acronyms was their ultimate purpose. From DEFRA was born DECC, which gave rise to BEIS, and now Denazify, I mean DESNZ. But I digress. What about the actual stats? These are as the previous edition in this series taken from Energy Trends tables available here.

1. Energy security; import dependency

Since 2010, DECC and its successors have reported statistics on the UK’s import dependency. How much of our energy are we reliant on other countries for, and how has this changed over time? Well, we flipped from a net exporter to a net importer in 2003:

After 2013, the worst year (so far) when we depended on imports for 48% of our energy, things have settled down to a stubborn mid to high 30s percent.

Another way to look at this is to have exports and imports on the same figure. The net is closely similar to the import dependency percentage in the form of the graph.

Energy demand has not gone up; in fact it has gone down. Our increasing demand for imported energy came not from a rapacious hunger for more, but from a withering of home-grown production – coupled with an overall decline in energy use. From 2001, the consumption of energy in the UK has gone down quite markedly (-25% ish). Some might call this a success story based on improved efficiency. I think it is more likely a tragedy of deindustrialisation.

In fact if you look at the energy consumption by sector over the past half century, it’s clear that energy use in industry has gone down quite markedly. It is now at about a third of the level it was in 1970. Domestic consumption meanwhile has stubbornly resisted attempts to cut it. Perhaps those attempts are bearing fruit for individual dwellings, but there are now more dwellings, so the net decrease is small.

2. Fossil fuel dependency

The other critical indicator of our energy system’s performance is supposedly our dependence on fossil fuels. Two statistics are presented in Energy Trends: the “low carbon” share of energy, and the “fossil fuel dependency” of energy.

The two proportions do not add up to 1, because net imports of leccy and the contribution of “non biodegradable waste” are not included in either.

Those with an eagle eye might be thinking that there is something missing even so. That certainly seems to be the case: here, burning woodchips and waste for electricity counts as low carbon. Together they make up about 10% of overall energy consumption in the UK. So depending on whether you believe they are low carbon sources of energy, the low carbon share is either 20.1% (DESNZ’s preferred figure), or 11.0% (excluding energy from waste and bioenergy).

It is possible to argue the toss on whether burning rubbish and/or woodchips is “low carbon.” I don’t think it is, since it emits carbon dioxide at the point of generation – that’s fairly obvious. The other low carbon generators like wind turbines might have plenty of carbon dioxide emissions along the way, but when they actually turn wind into leccy, they don’t produce any.

So to my way of thinking at least, the UK’s energy system is 11% of the way to Net Zero.

There is of course another minor issue, which is that the embodied carbon dioxide in imported goods is not counted as energy. However, it used energy in its creation, and that energy was unlikely to be “low carbon.”

3. Dispatchable vs. Non-Dispatchable Electricity

One factor that the stats bods at DESNZ do not find time to dwell on in their time series is how our electricity generating mix has evolved towards weather-dependent sources. The following figure shows that we are increasingly dependent on the whims of Aeolus for our juice. Non-dispatchable is wind and solar; hydropower is counted as dispatchable.

Conclusion

As the North Sea gas fields have begun to deflate, our dependence on imports of energy has risen to worrying levels. We have also made little progress towards “decarbonisation”, unless you count burning trees as a low carbon enterprise. I find myself wondering, if so little has been achieved after so much pain: will we ever see the farthest shore?

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Dall.E: A pylon being struck by lightning

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14 Comments

  3. Jit,

    Thank you for a clear and easily understandable summary of the problems with the agenda.

    I find it deeply worrying that those in charge (and those who want to replace them in order to be in charge themselves) all seem to believe the arrant nonsense that expensive, unreliable and unpredictable energy which is destabilising the grid and which can be compromised by bad actors attacking the cables from offshore wind farms equates to energy security. And either they really do believe it or they’re culpably dishonest. Since I like to attribute positive rather than negative motives to people, I suspect (and fear) that they really do believe it, even though it takes some heroic assumptions to get to that belief. Here’s an example of an energy minister in action:

    “Lower electricity prices not too far off, energy minister claims”

    https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2023/05/11/lower-electricity-prices-not-too-far-off-energy-minister-claims/

    …Visiting the SSEN converter construction site at Kergord on Thursday, UK energy minister Andrew Bowie said work to reform the system that sets the price for wholesale electricity was well underway.

    The junior minister with responsibilities for nuclear and networks said the government had stepped in to cap the price for electricity and promised that energy prices would come down over coming years – although he was unwilling to give an exact timeframe…

    …He added: “Moving forward we have to come up with a way of moving away from a situation where we have fantastic renewable energy which should be a lot cheaper and electricity prices that are not coupled to the gas price.

    “This is at the top of priorities for the government to get on with.

    “As we wean ourselves off expensive and the wildly fluctuating price for oil and gas, we will see an overall decrease in bills.

    “If we get all we need to do done in the tight timescale that we set ourselves, then we could in this country have the cheapest, and cleanest, electricity in Europe.”..

    …He added: “If we are going to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, and we are going to get to this greener future, and we are going to get cheaper bills, and we are going to become more energy independent, all of which I think is really important, then we have to build the infrastructure to allow us to do that.”

    Absolute twaddle, IMO.

    Like

  4. A great article, thanks Jit.

    Energy storage is a key issue relating to Energy Security & Fossil Fuel Dependence.

    Britain has just 29GWh of electricity storage capacity.

    We’ve 40,000GWh of natural gas storage capacity, plus direct connections to many off-shore gas fields.

    We also have a legal obligation for strategic Emergency Oil Stocks.

    “6.1. The UK’s obligation aligns with the EU obligation as defined in the Directive. This requires MS to hold stocks to cover the Crude Oil Equivalent of either 61 days of average daily inland consumption (“Inland Consumption”), or 90 days of average daily net imports.

    6.2. As the UK is a large producer of oil within the EU, its obligation is currently set in terms of the requirement to hold 61 days of Inland Consumption (the relevant calculation is set out in Annex 2 of the Directive).”

    More info here – with various conditions and variances:

    Click to access Guidance_for_Stakeholders_version_FEBRUARY_2015.pdf

    I’m unsure how much firewood Drax stores, but if push comes to shove, we’ve still plenty of trees available if the enviros permit them to be felled.

    Like

  5. **Mods**
    Hi

    A couple of minutes ago I posted a reply that may be trapped in spam! (It had 2 or 3 links)

    I’ve since refreshed the page a few times.

    Is there any WD-40 available to release it from the WordPress prison? 😀

    Like

  9. Ron, I presume “renewables” includes burning trees? I wonder how the renewable generation splits between wind/solar/burning trees? Something else to look up.

    Mark, the minister is clueless, but he can say what he likes – there is no-one to challenge him, and when the promised savings fail to materialise, he will be long gone – or else find some other way to blame our obsession with fossil fuel.

    Joe, replacing that gas storage with batteries is likely to be cost and materials prohibitive, if not impossible. Another sum for another day. But don’t worry, it will all be fine, if we keep saying it will; probably while whipping our shoulders with a bundle of birch twigs.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. “UK could be starved of energy, warns North Sea boss”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66019291

    The UK is at risk of being “starved” of North Sea energy leaving it reliant on imports, a major oil and gas producer has told the BBC.

    Ithaca Energy said Labour’s pledge to ban new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea and current taxation policy was “spooking” investors.

    Ithaca is almost entirely invested in North Sea oil and gas….

    …”By a new government imagining they’ll be able to stop licences and oil development in the UK, ultimately what that means is that they’ll be starving the UK of energy, and it will become very dependent on energy from abroad,” he [the executive chairman of Ithaca] said.

    North Sea oil and gas is traded on international markets and the prices are set globally, but Mr Myerson insists much of it is used domestically, and it therefore has a lower carbon footprint than energy imported from abroad.

    “Most of the hydrocarbons in the UK are developed and are produced for the UK market. Some of the oil will go to refineries abroad, but will ultimately make its way back to the UK,” he said….

    ..He said the company was still committed to investing in two of the biggest undeveloped oil fields in the North Sea, the controversial Cambo and Rosebank fields. Rosebank has the potential to produce 500 million barrels of oil, and could be approved by the government within weeks.

    But he said they would only be developed if it made financial sense, and said political announcements from all sides had been unhelpful.

    “Politicians keep making statements which spook investors.

    “They are saying they do want hydrocarbons, then they say that they don’t want hydrocarbons. When it comes to a project like Cambo and Rosebank, you need to make sure that the environment is stable because this is a project that will last for 10 years.”…

    Meanwhile, in Fantasy Land:

    …A spokesperson for the Treasury said it was “right that we recover excess profits resulting from Putin’s war” and that the money raised from the windfall tax had been used to help people with their energy bills.

    “But we also want the oil and gas sector to invest in British jobs and our energy security. That’s why our new Energy Security Investment Mechanism is designed to give investors the confidence to keep investing in domestic oil and gas production, based on historic prices.”…

    Is the worm turning? That’s an article on the front page of the BBC’s website, and it’s reasonably balanced. I can’t imagine either of those things happening just a few months ago.

    Like

  11. “A gas shock – not an oil shock – from the Iran war looks more threatening

    Europe and Asia will take an economic hit if the supply of Qatari LNG is halted by the closure of the strait of Hormuz”

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2026/mar/02/gas-shock-oil-iran-war-qatari-lng-strait-of-hormuz

    …The key variables, of course, will be how long Qatari production is shut, and how long Hormuz is effectively closed. Even the difference between a week and a month matters.

    In terms of numbers, UK gas was 75p a therm last Friday and hit 114p on Monday. It would still have to go 250p – and stay there for a while – to match the intensity of the 2022 crisis. But suddenly it is not unimaginable, as Stifel warns, that household energy bills could spike again, causing a fresh set of problems for a government (like the last one) that has placed the reliability and affordability of LNG at the heart of its energy policy.

    In its “security of supply” report last year, the government highlighted declining domestic North Sea production of gas but said “over the next four years specifically, we expect this changing supply mix to coincide with a robust, oversupplied global LNG market”. That market looked neither robust nor oversupplied on Monday.

    North Sea gas, anyone?

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Mark – thanks for the link to Nils article, liked this partial quote –

    “Europe – and Asia – are indeed in the eye of the LNG storm because they are the big buyers of the frozen gas. About a quarter of Europe’s gas supply came as LNG in 2025; Britain’s average has been 21% over the past five years, according to government statistics.

    Meanwhile, gas storage levels in Europe are low after a cold winter. The US, by contrast, sits pretty as an LNG exporter after its shale gas revolution over the past couple of decades.”

    UK fracking, anyone?

    Like

  13. The answer is staring us in the face, if only we did not have malicious morons in charge of the country. Drax has 6 boilers, two lying idle, which should be immediately re-commissioned to burn coal again. Any existing viable coal fired power stations moth-balled by the Tories (excluding the ones they blew up, of course) should be re-commissioned. North Sea gas fields should be re-opened, de-regulated and the punitive tax regime relaxed. The remaining 4 boilers at Drax should be converted back to coal burning. UK coal mines should be reopened. The fracking ban should be removed and existing wells re-commissioned – that is, if they haven’t managed to spike all the formerly operational wells by pouring millions of tons of concrete down them. The nuclear energy regulatory minefield should be blown up and small modular reactors brought online as quickly as possible. ALL expansion of renewables should be terminated and subsidies slashed (‘binding’ contracts be damned – we are facing a national emergency).

    Make British energy and industry great again!

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Claire gets it – way too late. The tacit admission of past Conservative failure is the understatement of the century.

    It shouldn’t have taken an Iranian attack on the world’s largest gas export facility in Qatar for us to realise the benefits of being able to produce our own oil and gas. As the world gets more dangerous, we must ditch fantasy Net Zero thinking and prioritise our own energy resilience. All of this has shown up our luxury belief that we in Britain are better off keeping our own oil and gas in the ground while making ourselves more reliant on Qatari LNG imports. First, let’s get the worst of the climate change lobby’s arguments out of the way. Destroying our own oil and gas production does not mean we will need any less oil and gas. Even the captured Climate Change Committee acknowledges that we’ll need oil and gas for decades to come. If we are going to need it, then of course we should get as much as possible from Britain. That is just common sense. Instead of maximising our own production, we’ve been sleepwalking into disaster and allowed the powerful green lobby to demonise an industry that is vital for our national resilience. Yesterday, Rachel Reeves missed an opportunity at the Spring Statement to reverse the damage that has been wrought on the North Sea. The Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, is a dangerous fantasist who has been hellbent on sacrificing our oil and gas production on the altar of Net Zero. He’d banned new oil and gas licences and charging effective marginal tax rates of over 100% on some companies. And for what? So we can increase our imports of higher-emission LNG from the other side of the world by 40% while British production is in freefall. The green lobby argue that there is no point drilling more in the North Sea, because ‘all of our gas is sold on international markets’. This is nonsense. Every single molecule of gas we extract from the North Sea goes into our pipes, making up half of our supply. We are losing 1,000 jobs a month, squandering £50 billion of investment and becoming less secure. Not a single exploration well was drilled in British waters last year – for the first time since 1964. Labour trumpet that the basin is just in natural decline. But Norway, which shares the exact same basin, tells a different story – last year they drilled 49 exploration wells and made 21 new discoveries. Admittedly, my own party have not been perfect. Policies like the windfall tax or mandating the electrification of oil rigs have not helped. When I was Energy Secretary, I signed off Rosebank, legislated to protect oil and gas licences and fought against windfall taxes – all in the face of great opposition. The Conservatives are clear that the oil and gas industry is a national asset and we must do all we can to maximise economic recovery of our own resources. So what should Rachel Reeves have done yesterday? First, end the ban on new licences, end the windfall tax, and scrap the Net Zero duties which are hammering our oil and gas sector. Fast-track permissions for Rosebank and Jackdaw. Downstream, our heavy industry and refineries are in crisis. We lost a third of our refineries last year alone. We have to stop imposing crippling, escalating Carbon Taxes that are killing British industry. We need to double down on nuclear which has the most secure energy supply chain, streamline regulations and reverse Labour’s decision to cancel my plan for another large nuclear plant at Wylfa. We must be clear-eyed about the fact that Ed Miliband is making us dangerously exposed to China’s dominance of critical mineral and renewable supply chains. We need to repeal the Climate Change Act that forces us to subordinate the priorities of energy security and affordability to decarbonisation. And if we want lower reliance on oil and gas, growth, and better living standards, then we must make electricity cheap. Our Cheap Power Plan to cut electricity bills by 20% for households and businesses would be a start. As the world gets more dangerous, we need to prioritise our energy and industrial resilience.

    https://x.com/ClaireCoutinho/status/2029131914196480307

    Liked by 2 people

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