Blackouts Predicted for Britain

(London, England) Concern is being voiced that UK electricity generation will soon lag behind demand.

Shadow Energy Secretary Greg Clark said: "Britain faces blackouts because the government has put its head in the sand about energy policy for a decade. Over the next 10 years we need to replace one third of our generating capacity but Labour has left it perilously late and has been forced to admit they expect power cuts for the first time since the 1970s.

He added: "The next government has an urgent task to accelerate the deployment of a new generating capacity and to take steps to ensure that, as a matter of national security, there is enough capacity to provide a margin of safety."

The looming power shortage is caused by the scheduled closure by 2015 of nine oil and coal-fired power plants as part of anti-pollution measures. Four nuclear power plants are also set to shut. The Scottish Government's position is against any new nuclear build north of the border.

Power rationing has not taken place in Britain since the 1970s, when a three-day week was brought in to preserve coal during a miners' strike.

Mr Clark also claimed the scale of the blackouts could be three times worse than the government predictions because some of the modelling was "optimistic" as it assumed little or no change in electricity demand until 2020 and a rapid increase in wind farm capacity with existing nuclear power stations granted extensions to their operating lives.

In response, a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said the Conservatives are wrong.

Heh.