It won’t surprise you to learn that most of the energy we currently rely on in the UK is fossil fuel based. Around 99% of vehicles run on diesel, petrol or lpg. Around 84% of heating and 40% of electricity is generated by gas or oil.
As the statistics below highlight, in 2020 we imported our oil & gas from 19 different countries:
<a href=”https://www.statista.com/statistics/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk/” rel=”nofollow”><img src=”https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/381963/crude-oil-and-natural-gas-import-origin-countries-to-united-kingdom-uk.jpg” alt=”Statistic: Origin countries of imported crude oil and natural gas liquids to the United Kingdom (UK) in 2020 (in 1,000 metric tons) | Statista” style=”width: 100%; height: auto !important; max-width:1000px;-ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic;”/></a><br />Find more statistics at <a href=”https://www.statista.com” rel=”nofollow”>Statista</a>
Out of the 35,058,000 tons of crude oil 34% was from Norway, with the USA our second biggest supplier at 32%, followed by Russia with 11% and Nigeria at 8%.
Our 1,642,000 tons of LNG (liquified natural gas) are virtually all from Norway as they contribute 87%, with 6% from the USA and 3% each from Denmark & Belgium and less than 1% from France & Russia combined.
In the same year we produced 45,700,000 tons of crude oil. The reason we import and export so much is there are different grades of crude oil and we have to send it away to be refined.
We don’t produce our own gas so are entirely reliant on imports.
Electricity
Our electricity comes from a range of sources. Around 42% are from fossil fuels, 19% from low carbon nuclear power plants, 35% from renewables and 4% from imports & storage which will be a mixture of all.
As we know all of our gas is imported, we could build new refineries to produce gas (but that wouldn’t help reduce our carbon footprint) so the best way we can reduce the volatility of our electricity prices is to increase our UK based renewable and nuclear power.
Nuclear capacity is currently around 6.5GW, well below the 1995 peak of 12.7GW. The latest nuclear reactor at Hinkley point is due to come online in June 2027 and will have an output of around 3.3GW. This won’t really affect the overall capacity of nuclear power as seven smaller AGR stations will be offline by 2028, although there are talks of building more new reactors to get us to 25% nuclear energy by 2050.
Therefore the lion’s share in getting rid of fossil fuel generated electricity, and increasing our independence, will need to be generated by renewables, but we’ll all need to be smarter in how we use and store this energy.