In Britain, the authorities were convicted of hushing up a critical issue

MOSCOW, 29 Aug – PRIME. The UK will face the prospect of a power outage this winter, Bloomberg writes, citing London Energy Consulting CEO David Cox.

He said the electricity price ceiling should rise to £3,549 from October and the government needs to find more money to “help people through this crisis.” He added that the current mechanisms “do not protect consumers in any way.”

Cox stressed that people “will survive this winter only with the help of public money,” accusing politicians of “hushing up” the problem.

“This winter we will run out of gas in Europe. This could lead to even more price increases. Not only that, we may run out of gas to the extent that there will be blackouts, we don’t have enough gas as a fuel to produce electricity, and this is a serious problem that the government is currently hushing up,” the expert said.

He recalled that the North Sea fields supply about 40% of British gas, as a result of which the UK imports the rest of its fuel. However, Cox said shortages in Europe meant the UK would not be able to go there and could instead be forced to import from more distant countries such as the US and Qatar.

According to him, 40% of electricity in the UK comes from gas generation. “If we don’t get that gas, the lights will go out and we’ll have power outages,” he warned.

“If we have a cold winter, colder than average, we have serious, serious problems,” the expert stressed.

He stressed the importance that more public money is needed to help people during a “significant energy crisis”.

“Where this money comes from, how it’s paid out, is a political choice. You can either give it directly to consumers, and we’ve seen a number of moves like this coming up. Or you can give it to energy companies as a loan from the government, and they will limit the price of the tariff to what it is now, and that will help everyone, and you can try to focus more help on poorer consumers,” Cox said.

“There is no other way to do this, public money, taxpayer money must be involved to help people survive this crisis. This is a really serious energy crisis,” the expert concluded.