Britain’s gas supply has reached ‘concerningly low’ levels and could run out in a matter of days after an Arctic blast sent temperatures plunging.
The icy weather over the last few days has seen demand for gas-fired power stations skyrocket, energy firm Centrica said.
Now it’s feared a fresh blast of freezing weather – which could see temperatures plunge to a bone-chilling -20C – might trigger an energy crisis.
The UK is heavily reliant on natural gas to keep the homes of millions of Brits warm during the winter. It also uses a significant amount to power the electricity grid.
But as of Thursday, storage sites across the UK were 26 per cent down on last year’s supply, leaving them around ‘half full’, Centrica said.
‘This means the UK has less than a week of gas demand in store,’ the energy giant, which owns British Gas, warned.
‘Gas storage was already lower than usual heading into December as a result of the early onset of winter.’
It came as Downing Street denied claims the nation came ‘within a whisker’ of energy blackouts earlier this week amid the cold weather and low wind power generation.
Labour has pledged to debarbonise the UK’s power grid by 2030, although PM Sir Keir Starmer recently diluted the promise to at least 95 per cent ‘clean’ power by the end of the decade.
Tory peer Lord David Frost, Britain’s former Brexit negotiator, said the current situation showed the Government’s push for Net Zero – being championed by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband – is ‘a dangerous and expensive insanity’.
He warned Brits to ‘get your candles and blankets ready’ as he lashed out at the UK’s ‘complacent’ energy authorities.
Downing Street today dismissed fears about the UK’s energy supplies in the face of sub-zero temperatures.
A No10 spokesman said: ‘We are confident we will have a sufficient gas supply and electricity capacity to meet demand this winter, due to our diverse and resilient energy system.
‘We speak regularly with the National Energy System Operator (Neso) to monitor our energy security and ensure they have all tools at their disposal – if needed – to secure our supply.
‘Our mission to deliver clean power by 2030 will replace our dependency on unstable fossil fuel markets with clean homegrown power controlled in Britain, which is the best way to protect billpayers and boost our energy independence.’
Gas storage was already lower than usual heading into December as a result of the early onset of winter, according to Centrica.
Combined with stubbornly high gas prices, this has meant that it has been more difficult to top up storage over Christmas.
The ongoing icy conditions and the end of Russian gas pipeline supplies through Ukraine on December 31, has meant that gas inventory across the UK are now reaching crisis levels.
Despite being full ahead of winter, current gas inventory at Rough, the country’s largest gas storage site, which is operated by Centrica, is 20 per cent lower than at the same time last year.
Rough has played a crucial role so far this winter by supplying almost 420 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas since early November, enough to heat three million homes every day.
‘The UK’s gas storage levels are concerningly low,’ said Centrica’s group chief executive Chris O’Shea.
‘We are an outlier from the rest of Europe when it comes to the role of storage in our energy system and we are now seeing the implications of that.
‘Energy storage is what keeps the lights on and homes warm when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, so investing in our storage capacity makes perfect economic sense.
‘We need to think of storage as a very valuable insurance policy.’
It has been claimed the UK came ‘within a whisker of blackouts’ on Wednesday after plunging temperatures and low wind power generation left grid operators scrambling to keep the lights on.
Surplus electricity capacity on the national grid had plummeted to just 580 megawatts (MW) by 5.30pm, according to data platform Amira.
One expert warned the energy reserves were so low that even an outage at a ‘relatively small’ power station risked causing blackouts.
Kathryn Porter, an independent energy consultant, said: ‘On January 8, the GB power market came within a whisker of blackouts. Neso used almost every last megawatt available.
‘This should be a real wake-up call about the dangers of relying on weather-based generation.’
But yesterday Neso pushed back at the claims, insisting that ‘at no point’ were power supplies close to failing.
It said it had been holding onto around 1.4 gigawatts of emergency reserves which went unused on Wednesday.
Craig Dyke, Neso’s director of system operations, said: ‘Neso operates Great Britain’s electricity network to one of the highest levels of safety and reliability anywhere in the world.
‘Yesterday our control room engineers used our standard operational tools to manage the electricity network and ensure that we maintained enough electricity for our standard operating contingency.
‘At no point were electricity supplies less than anticipated demand and our engineers were able to rebalance the system without the need to consider emergency measures.’
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.