Is the UK facing a winter of blackouts?

UK households may be hit by a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if gas supplies run extremely low, National Grid has warned.

The government has dismissed power-supply fears as Liz Truss looks to secure a long-term deal with Norway, and National Grid has said that blackouts are “unlikely”. But that hasn’t prevented scare headlines on many of this morning’s front pages, with Metro warning of a “winter of disconnect” and The Mirror forecasting a “return to the dark ages”.

Some Whitehall insiders fear “the narrative could run out of control”, with “prominent voices offering doom and gloom assumptions sparking frustration”, said Politico’s London Playbook.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

What did the papers say?

Despite the “doom and gloom” warnings, Truss’s government “has resisted mounting a public information campaign of its own to try and reduce consumption”, said the Financial Times.

“The last thing you want to do is tell someone, you know, switch things off for the national need when it makes no difference to the national security position,” Climate Minister Graham Stuart told Sky News. “We think that we’ve got a diverse, strong supply and in all the central scenarios we’re going to be fine, but we plan for everything.”

All the same, said The Telegraph.,memories of “Ted Heath’s cabinet convening by candlelight will loom large in Westminster all over the coming weeks and months as for the first time in half a century, the spectre of blackouts has returned”.

In an update on the UK's state of readiness for the cold months ahead, the National Grid warned of a worst-case scenario in which families and businesses could face planned outages to ensure that the grid does not collapse.

If there were insufficient energy supplies, the system operator said, emergency measures would be “necessary to ensure the overall security and integrity of the electricity system across Great Britain”.

National Grid “warned that gas imports from Europe may be at risk because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, potentially jeopardising Britain’s energy security”, said The Times. And “even if gas supplies were adequate, household electricity supplies could still be at risk if temperatures plummeted, if there was insufficient wind and if there were no power imports from mainland Europe”.

Although Truss has ruled out an energy-saving campaign, the prime minister yesterday refused to reprise her pledge during the Tory leadership election that there will not be blackouts this winter.

Speaking to reporters in Prague, while attending a summit of European leaders, Truss insisted that “we do have a good supply of energy in the UK” and are “in a much better position than many other countries” – but stopped short of explicitly offering a guarantee of no blackouts.

Health leaders have warned that power cuts “could endanger thousands of people who use life-saving machines at home”, The Guardian reported.

Given that “Truss was unable to rule out blackouts”, said London Playbook, fears and speculation “are not going to disappear in the near future”.

What's next?

The UK is much less directly reliant on Russian gas than many countries in mainland Europe, and the National Grid’s latest forecasts indicate that margins between peak demand and power supply will be sufficient.

If blackouts were required, however, prior notice would be given and vulnerable households would be exempted.

Energy suppliers operate a priority service register to ensure that vulnerable customers are “given advance warning of power cuts, are at the front of the queue when electricity is reconnected, and in some cases are eligible for portable generators, hot meals and drinks, and alternative accommodation”, said The Guardian.

In a bid to conserve Britain’s energy supplies, households with smart meters will reportedly be offered up to £10 a day to reduce their energy usage at peak times from November. “They could do this by taking steps like using the washing machine overnight, for example,” said PoliticsHome.

A now-scrapped public information campaign signed off by Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg would also have encouraged householders to lower the temperatures of their boilers, turn radiators off in unused rooms and switch off heating when no one is home.

But Truss “is said to be ‘ideologically opposed’ to a public information campaign this winter amid concerns that it would be too interventionist”, according to The Times.

An unnamed cabinet minister reportedly told PoliticsHome that the campaign was unnecessary, because the public is “smarter than you think”.