The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) should adopt a clear-cut energy security strategy while striking the right balance between climate goals and security, the Energy and Climate Change committee in the Commons urged in its 8th report.
The committee called upon Government to draw up plans immediately for how the tension between climate and security goals will be dealt with if Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is not delivered by 2020.
“We recommend that the Department describe the scope of its energy security modelling and how the findings are used,” the report says adding an energy security strategy should be published in single, dedicated document.
Defining energy security as ensuring a “reliable supply of primary fuels, a secure delivery system and smart and efficient usage by consumers” it said “failure in any one of these three areas is likely to mean that energy needs go unmet.”
Therefore, DECC needs to be clear about the “early warning” signals that it uses to assess the risk profile of each threat to energy security and be clear about the resilience measures that it would need to adopt to mitigate risk to energy security.
The committee welcomed Government's aim to move away from dependence on fossil fuels in the long-term.
Yet the committee told the Government to continue monitoring the diversity of sources and suppliers of oil and gas to the UK in order to avoid becoming overly dependent on a single source.
“This will become more important as dependence on imports grows. Government should also consider how vulnerable imports to the UK are to disruption and what sources would be available to replace imports in the event of disruption,” it outlined.
The decline in UKCS oil and gas production could have economic impacts such as decreasing tax revenue and jobs, and a negative impact on our balance of payments, it added.
