Govt To Spend £15bn On Undersea Power Cables From Europe
The Government is set to spend around £5 billion on undersea power cables to ensure Britain doesn’t suffer power blackouts over the next ten years.
There’s been much speculation over whether Britain will face blackouts over the next decade as fossil fuel power stations and old nuclear power plants are shut down. There are concerns that there won’t be enough power generated and therefore the Government is to spend billions of pounds on undersea cables to import energy from abroad.
There are concerns that as demand for electricity increases we will face power cuts but the Government has plans to prevent blackouts, by importing electricity from abroad and to do this it is to spend over £15 billion on undersea power cables.
It’s unclear whether this cost will be added to household and business energy bills. While domestic and business electricity prices and gas prices have increased over recent weeks due to higher wholesale energy prices, the cost of energy is also made up of additional costs including the cost of delivering energy to homes and businesses.
What makes it worse for Britain is that as an island, it’s more difficult to import energy compared with other European countries. Talks are now taking place between countries including Ireland, Belgium, Norway and Spain, to allow cables to connect to Britain so that electricity can be imported.
It means countries with surplus power would be able to export electricity to Britain and help prevent blackouts.
There’s already a cable between Kent and the Netherlands. This 160 mile cable was laid this year and cost around £500 million. The high cost shows why it will cost over £5 billion to connect undersea cables to a number of European countries.
As we are urged to buy electric cars there’s suddenly an urgent need for the Government to find extra sources of energy because with supplies as they are at the moment they may not be enough energy to meet increased demand in the 2020’s.
The Government is also keen to expand wind power in the UK and as we all know, the wind doesn’t always blow in the right places or exactly when we need it. Therefore cables connecting Britain to other European countries may enable energy to be imported when the wind is blowing in one country and not in another.
The Energy Minister, Charles Hendry, has met with energy ministers from both Ireland and the Channel Islands over recent weeks and they have discussed about how they can work together to use both wind and wave power. Ireland in particular has a lot of potential wind energy both onshore and offshore but as the demand for energy in Ireland is quite small compared with Britain, nothing has been done to exploit this potential.