Energy crisis: Sunak grilled by BBC host over energy price cap
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Households in the UK are currently gripped by the worst effects of a global energy crisis brought about by skyrocketing price of wholesale gas. Within days, energy regulator Ofgem is set to raise the price cap on household bills, with many analysts putting the figure at somewhere around £3,500 a year from October. Given that the UK’s reliance on natural gas has been blamed for the soaring bills, many energy experts have called on the UK to boost wind energy generation capabilities, particularly given UK’s massive wind potential in the North Sea.
However, critics like Sir John Redwood, the MP for Wokingham slammed wind energy for not producing enough power, and called for more domestically produced natural gas.
He tweeted yesterday: “Today wind is delivering just 10 percent of our electricity despite news of a new windfarm starting up with some power.
“Still using stand by coal with 57 percent of electricity from gas.”
On Monday, Seagreen, which is Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm, began generating power off the Angus coast in the North Sea.
When fully operational, the site will produce around five terawatt hours (TWh) of renewable electricity per year, enough to power the equivalent of 1.6 million households.
However, Sir Redwood continued to advocate for natural gas, tweeting: “Every action needs to be taken by the industry and government to produce more UK gas.
“It is the gas shortage that is now doing most damage.”
It is important to note that while wind energy output has been far lower than natural gas over the past few days, on Saturday wind generated the largest share of the UK’s electricity at 37.7 percent, followed by natural gas at 34.5 percent.
While the price of natural gas has skyrocketed, the cost of electricity generated from wind has plummeted by 44-78 percent from its peak period between 2007 and 2010, as the costs of wind turbines fall.
Meanwhile, electricity generation from wind power has jumped by a staggering 715 percent since 2009.
Meanwhile, industry experts like Octopus Energy founder Greg Jackson have blamed the soaring energy bills on oil and natural gas, describing the situation as a “fossil fuel crisis”.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he said: “Make no mistake, the cause of this crisis is that we’re too dependent on fossil fuels, often from regimes where, you know, we see what Putin’s doing in Ukraine – the fossil fuels give those regimes both the funding and the leverage.
“We need to escape from the clutches of fossil fuels. And we’ve heard fossil fuel crises periodically ever since I was a kid and probably before that.”
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Mr Jackson added that the UK could soon move to a system where electricity would be generated from “homegrown renewables”.
He added: “We have the ability to build a system that isn’t dependent on fossil fuels anymore, and it will be cheaper than the one we’re in even before the crisis, and it will stop us being at the mercy of crises like this.”
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