Energy Views

I first visited Japan a few months after the  2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami . I returned for another few weeks in 2019. During my first trip, the Japanese were still very much in the grip of recovering from the earthquake, tsunami and the resultant disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. All of Japan's reactors, which produced 25% of their electricity, were shut down indefinitely. These plants almost produced a large proportion of the total energy consumed in buildings, when considering that natural gas is rarely used: for the vast majority of the population, air conditioning is ubiquitous and the need for heating rare. The disaster had a major impact on Japan. Firstly, despite being blessed with one seemingly inexhaustible resource, its stoic and respectful people, Japan isn't blessed with mineral resources, including natural gas, coal or oil, which all has to be imported. Given its distance from gas sources like Russia and Australia, that means expens...

What are energy interconnectors? Energy interconnectors are high capacity cables or gas pipelines that connect two energy grids, with the aim of balancing supply and demand across two or more geographic areas. They're typically between two countries, like the East West Interconnector , the 500MW electricity cable that links Ireland with Wales. But they can also link two islands of the same country, like the 500MW Moyle cable that links Scotland and Northern Ireland. Interconnectors are typically laid on, or beneath, the seabed, like the 40 inch IUK  gas interonnector that links the UK with Belgium. They can also run within bridges or - like the 2019 Anglo-French 1GW ElecLink  cable - through a tunnel. What's all the fuss? Interconnectors based on advanced technology aren't especially new. The first link between two countries - at least in Europe - was the 160MW cable linking the UK and France, which opened in the early 1960s. Like its 2GW successor, which opened ...