Gas prices hit three year high: comment

“The Energy Crisis Commission [2] warned that the UK remained dangerously underprepared for another energy crisis. Nobody knows exactly how the next few weeks will play out, but with homes and businesses still facing the debt and after-effects of the last gas crisis, people will understandably be concerned.

"So much focus is put on drilling in the North Sea, but when you actually look at the regulator’s official numbers [3] you realise more drilling makes a difference of a few percentage points; it's a red herring. If you truly want the energy used in Britain to come from Britain, the fact is the only way to do that is to reduce demand for gas, given the North Sea is on the decline, has been for years and that will continue even if new drilling happens.

"This means replacing gas boilers with electric heat pumps running on British renewables that can be built relatively quickly. If you don’t, you may end up with gas boilers running increasingly on Qatari gas, which currently can’t get out of the Strait of Hormuz, and the price of all gas is dictated by international markets.

"Fortunately, any looming crisis is unlikely to hit electricity bills quite as hard because more renewables have been linked up to the grid meaning we don’t have to run gas power stations as much. Last year renewables cut the wholesale price of electricity by a third." [4]