Security of Supply for the UK

Professor Jonathan Stern, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies

Although the 2007 EWP seeks to define energy security, its approach is insufficient. In particular both domestic and international dimensions need to be considered, but most attention (academia, policy, and media) is given to international issues, with the EWP discussing an approach based upon lobbying other countries to promote open and competitive energy markets. This will not address the most important problems the UK faces and instead there is a need to take account of the resilience of production and network infrastructure to weather-related events and the ability to cope with catastrophic technical failure or accident (shocks). Most energy security incidents are caused by domestic supply and infrastructure failure and not international dimensions.