Dark Ages

‘WE have peered into the future, but couldn’t see anything because none of the lights were working.

Britain in 2020

That is the doom-laden prediction of the Institution Of Civil Engineers which looks forward to the year 2020 and can only see a repeat of 1974.

By that time, the report says, we will be importing 80% of our gas needs ‘from politically unstable countries thousands of miles away’.

Mechanical failure, sabotage and terrorist attacks could lead to power cuts within days.

David Anderson, chairman of Ice’s energy board, tells the Guardian: ‘We will literally be at the end of the line which will start in Algeria, Iran and Russia and pass through many gas-needy countries.

‘It does not need much imagination to realise how vulnerable we will be.’

At the moment, Britain is self-sufficient in gas, which provides 38% of the country’s electricity, but will have to start importing within the next three years.

And with coal-fired power stations being phased out to cut down on emissions and only one nuclear power station operational by 2020, the country will be reliant on gas.

As Simon Skilling, head of strategy at PowerGen says, ‘it is feasible that by 2020 the lights could go out’.

Unless somehow we can all start producing more gas…

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Posted: 1st, July 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink