Where our energy comes from
Gas
We buy all of our gas from the UK grid. In Britain, most of our gas still comes from the North Sea, the rest comes from Norway, Continental Europe and some from further afield. It mostly reaches us via undersea pipelines which connect to the Grid. Some gas in the European network comes from Russia but it’s less than 0.5% of the UK’s supply.
North Sea Gas production peaked in 2000 but it’s been declining at a rate of about 2% a year ever since. In 2009, around 70% of the UK’s gas will come from UK North Sea gas fields.
Increasingly, gas is imported as liquefied natural gas (LNG); natural gas cooled to about -165° C and compressed to make it easier to transport. In this form it can be shipped all over the world, just like oil. The biggest exporters of LNG are Qatar, Algeria, Indonesia and Malaysia.
We buy our electricity from both renewable and non-renewable sources. A lot of our electricity comes from the national grid.
We also purchase electricity directly from renewable generators, including wind turbines and landfill gas. Landfill gas generation converts the methane given off by waste disposal facilities into electricity. If it wasn’t captured, the methane would escape into the atmosphere. Methane’s effect on global warming is more than 20 times greater than CO2’s, so landfill gas generation is a good idea.