A warning placed on the National Grid website calling for an extra 300 megawatts of generating capacity to meet winter, peak-time demand is largely because of the consistent outages from Britain's ailing nuclear fleet.
The problem is compounded by rising gas prices, following an announcement that a gas pipeline in North-East England is running at reduced capacity and a liquified natural gas terminal in Wales will not be up and running in time.
A spokesman for the Major Energy Users Council said that his group was 'trying to understand' why prices had suddenly risen so high.
This article first appeared in the Ecologist October 2007
