Will the lights go out?

Sometime in the early seventies the lights went out. I remember it vividly. We were watching Star Trek and a horrible bat thing had landed on Spock's back. And then nothing. We lived in a modern house with oil fired central heating and an electric cooker. When the light died so did the heat. The only source of light we had in the house was the advent candle. The days to Christmas disappeared as we shivered in the dark. It was years before I learned how Spock survived.

We were never that unprepared again and all these years later there are torches scattered around my house and a number of packs of candles and boxes of matches. These are short term measures though; we are almost entirely dependent on the reliability of our complex energy systems. That's why I keep an eye on energy issues. During the cold snap there have been reported concerns about the level of natural gas stored in the UK. Apparently we keep a lot less than other nations. This latest piece of news is much more worrying. From the BBC; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8494899.stm

The government is, of course, aware of all this. Their UK Low Carbon Transition Plan looks at carbon dioxide emissions and energy security; compatible issues. Until recently I had naively thought that we had all, private, public and business, given this some serious thought and put in place energy minimisation programmes. Not so much. The recent snow has been very revealing about who on my street has insulated their loft. A surprising number are paying to warm the feet of the local magpies perched on their roofs. Businesses are in a similar situation. There are tools and grants available and the Carbon Reduction Commitment means that, apart from the obvious driver of saving money, organisations are finally going to have to get serious about this. Good! If we end up sitting in the dark and cold after we have done everything we can I will pull my mittens on and put up with it. I'll be very cross though, if we have wasted our resource because we are running the air con and heating at the same time or are heating our buildings with the doors open. Have I seen this? More often than you would believe.

The winter of 1973 was when the public first became of aware of energy security issues as the miner's strike turned the lights out across the country. My abiding memory of the time is standing on the beach at Formby with the lights out over Liverpool and a glory of stars above me. These days I'd like the glory without the discomfort please. We all need to work on our resource efficiency.