What role does gas currently play in the UK’s energy mix?
Natural gas currently plays a significant role in the UK’s energy mix.
In 2011, gas provided about 38 per cent of the UK energy needs – that’s including electricity, heating and transport. For electricity alone, gas-fired power plants accounted for about 39 per cent of electricity generation.
Up until 2004, the UK could almost entirely rely on its own supply of natural gas, extracted from the seabed in the UK Continental Shelf. Domestic supplies, however, started to decline from 2000, and in 2011, they were about half of what they used to be a decade earlier.
Currently the UK imports about 40 per cent of its natural gas supplies. Of this, more than half is transported by pipelines from Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands, while the rest is shipped as liquid natural gas, mostly from Qatar.
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