ZEMCH 2015 - International Conference Proceedings | Page 200

People in the UK are already suffering of extremely high prices of electricity that mainstream people could not afford. In BBC’s (Energy Crisis in the UK 2013) documentary, some people in Blackpool, which is a rather small town and suffers a high rate of unemployment, people are trying to
provide proper insulation for their own homes, and are living and sleeping in one room to cut
down the cost of heating (YouTube 2014). Natural gas imports are shown in Figure 5, over 60% of
the UK’s coal is already imported, principally from Russia, followed by South Africa and Colombia
(Day 2007).

Figure 5: UK Natural Gas Imports (Day 2007)
The UK’s latest proposals are two documents, released for consultation by the Department of
Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in December 2006, which had three admirable main
goals; to achieve zero-carbon new homes by 2016; to increase the UK’s energy security by reducing reliance on imported gas; and to help to meet the UK’s Kyoto commitments.
Potentials of renewable energy resources such as wind, wave, tidal and solar are alluring; there
are quite a few limitations to them. For instance, intermittence – availability only when the wind
blows, the tide flows or the sun shines – since storage of significant quantities is not yet widely
available, figure 6. In the UK, wind power is available only about 20-25% of the time, whereas base
load electricity demand is constant 24/7 (Day 2007).

Figure 6: UK total primary energy consumption by source 2001-2012 (US Energy Information 2012)

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ZEMCH 2015 | International Conference | Bari - Lecce, Italy