EU: carbon policy could leave UK in the dark

Britain’s old coal-fired power plants have only six more years to live at the most. Their death sentence has been passed by the European Union, which decreed that the most polluting stations must be retired after a fixed number of hours. But experts predict that the phasing out of these reliable but dirty old beasts will leave the UK facing a catastrophic shortage of energy that may lead to power cuts and vastly inflated bills.

New nuclear plants will not arrive until 2017 at the very earliest and Britain will be reliant on gas at a time when North Sea reserves are depleting and supplies must come from unstable regions, such as Russia and the Middle East.

When it comes to energy issues, the EU’s priorities are firmly on the side of tackling climate change. Some experts are privately beginning to question whether the UK needs to prioritise its own expensive energy security needs over the rising cost of meeting the EU’s objectives on climate change.

“If it came down to a choice, and I believe in the short term that it does, then fulfilling our obligations to the EU under Kyoto ought to be second priority to the issue of national energy security,” says Rupert Soames, chief executive of the FTSE-250 emergency power supplier Aggreko.

Telegraph