Officially responding to the Energy and Climate Change Committee (ECCC) report, the UK’s Energy Supply: Security or Independence, the Government said it welcomed the findings and is working to develop energy strategies that improve energy security, with energy efficiency anticipated to play a major role in this.

As part of the ECCC study, the security of the UK’s energy supply was looked at to determine what needs to be done to improve on this in the future.

As a result, the report defined energy security as a system able to “meet the needs of people and organisations for energy services such as heating, lighting, powering appliances and transportation, in a reliable and affordable way both now and in the future”, and called on the Government to consider this when making decisions.

However, while the Government welcomed the findings and described energy security as a “key priority”, it argued that any definition also needs to include price variations, volatility and sustainability.

According to the Government, it plans to boost security through system resilience and “robust competitive markets”, reducing demand on fossil fuel and energy, as well as influencing other countries.

It was agreed that renewables would play a major role in energy security, saying that electricity generation could be achieved through a number of technologies, such as renewables, low carbon and fossil-fuel, which it said would help to “diversify our energy mix

The Government did agree with the report findings that the UK needs more infrastructure resilience to increase its gas storage capacity as a result of a decline in domestic production.

It responded by stating: “As domestic production continues to decline, so additional import capacity will be required; and as the proportion of intermittent generation sources increases, the gas market will need to respond by delivering greater flexibility.”

The full report and response can be downloaded here.

Carys Matthews

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