Second Update of August 2019 – An overview of last week’s Energy news

Below is this week’s summary. It should be a one minute read relevant to UK energy with links to documents for those who wish to read more.

(Click a bullet point to open the relevant article)

Monday – 5th August

• Further analysis of BEIS annual UK energy statistics shows drop in energy usage alongside UK economy. Article correlates this with a drop in manufacturing industry and rise in financial and services sector and a move towards importing goods.

• China’s growth in natural gas demand continues. China will import more than 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas from Turkmenistan within next 2 years. For reference UK consumes about 3 trillion cubic feet per year.

• A diverse group of businesses, trade unions and NGO’s has written to the UK Government requesting a change to policy to encourage onshore wind power generation as part of policy for net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Wednesday – 7th August

• UK energy price cap is set to fall in late Autumn by £79 average (approx. 7%) due to a drop in cost of purchase of energy for suppliers.

Thursday – 8th August

• BBC reports on a study from Edinburgh University into the potential use of oil and gas platforms for storing Carbon Dioxide in depleted north sea reservoirs.

• UK Government report shows that 4% of ‘road and non-road mobile machinery’ fuel was supplied by biofuel in the first half of 2019.

Friday – 9th August

• Russia has become the second biggest importer of liquid natural gas (LNG) to Europe after Qatar. France is biggest importer of LNG followed by Spain then UK.

Saturday – 10th August

• 1 million people in UK lost power on Friday 9th August 2019 as a gas-powered generator and an offshore wind farm went down.

Sunday – 11th August

• UK’s third biggest supermarket chain (Asda) has reached agreement with National Grid to switch off refrigerators in 300 stores during peak demand for electricity.