By Emily Godsen

March 19, 2018 - The looming closure of Britain’s coal plants could cause an energy supply crisis, a leading consultancy has warned.

Wood Mackenzie said that Britain could be forced to cut off electricity or gas to industry in a cold snap.

National Grid, which manages energy supplies, was forced to issue a rare gas shortage warning on March 1 as the “Beast from the East” caused soaring demand and disrupted supplies. Gas prices soared to mult-decade highs and the incident has reignited debate about the resilience of Britain’s energy systems.

Wood Mackenzie points out that coal-fired power plants ran almost flat out during the cold snap, reducing the need to burn gas for electricity.

All those coal-powered plants are due to shut by 2025 under a government policy to help tackle climate change; many are expected to shut sooner because they are struggling to make money.

In a report, the consultancy argues that this “raises an acute concern over the security of supply”, compounded by dwindling output from the North Sea. “In five years’ time, with a significantly reduced coal fleet and UK gas production down 25 per cent, the gas market will struggle to balance during extreme weather events,” it said.

If National Grid cannot balance supply and demand, it can temporarily disconnect some big industrial users to help protect supplies to households.

Murray Douglas, research director of Wood Mackenzie, said that had coal plants not been running during the recent gas crisis there might not have been enough gas to run extra gas power plants and meet demand for heating homes and fuelling industry.

“It’s likely that they would have had to look at either interrupting some of the power supply or some of the gas supply,” he said.

A spokeswoman for National Grid said that it was looking at how changes could affect both the electricity and gas systems. “We are confident that both our electricity and gas systems will be able to adapt,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the business department said: “We have been clear that we will manage the phase-out of coal by 2025 without risking security of electricity supply. This timescale provides ample time for orderly retirements while the infrastructure and technology to meet our energy needs comes online.”

She said that the UK had “highly diverse and flexible sources of gas supply” and that the government had “stress-tested and modelled our energy resilience for the next 20 years” and was confident of high levels of security of supply. 

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