The Britain's energy pride turned out to be a big mistake

Sergey Kondratiev, Deputy Head of the Economic Department of the Institute for Energy and Finance, commented to Vzglyad.ru on Russian on gas supplies to the UK.

The UK is experiencing one of the worst energy crises in Europe. He forced the authorities to take an extremely unpopular and risky step: to announce an incredible increase in electricity prices for the population from October 1 - immediately by 80%. And this is not the first increase in prices in the country.

This is the second increase in prices for the population in the UK. The first was from April - up to two thousand pounds. And although the kingdom is far from being a poor state, such prices for electricity even for its inhabitants are too much, Sergey Kondratyev says.

“In fact, dependence on Russian gas for most European countries does not play a decisive role in the current crisis. For example, in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Finland there was a very high dependence on Russian gas, but they are in a better position. A much more important point is what the country's total dependence on gas is in principle,” the expert explains.

According to him, the UK has a very high share of gas in the energy mix - and, in fact, there is no standby generation. For example, France has nuclear power plants, Poland has coal-fired generation, and Germany has retained some of both nuclear and coal-fired generation. And Britain was ahead of all of Europe in terms of decarbonisation.

“The UK has become a hostage to its own energy policy,” Kondratiev says.