Electricity Imports to Grow

The Financial Times today reports a prediction from National Grid that as the capacity margin tightens imports of electricity will continue to grow. Interconnectors currently amount to 3GW capacity (2 with France, 1 with the Netherlands) but there are plans for a further 1GW connection with France and 1 GW with Belgium. Furthemore, there is ongoing development work on possible connections to RoI, Norway and Denmark (and, according to the FT, to Iceland, although I could find no mention of this on NG's website - I guess partly because landfall would be in Scotland). All of this is a few years away as yet and won't make a massive dent in the UK's supply side but it's all indicative of the woeful mess successive govenments have made of our electricity supply policy (indeed, energy policy as a whole). On that latter point, current imports of energy are over 40% and climbing. Scary!