Fears of a plot by Russia to sabotage Britain’s energy pipelines means families should pack a 72-hour ‘survival kit’, security advisers have warned.
As the UK pursues Net Zero environmental targets – leading to the closure of coal-fired power stations – the country has become increasingly reliant on supplies of gas and electricity from abroad in order to ‘keep the lights on’.
Nearly 40 per cent of the UK’s gas supply is imported from Norway, much of which comes through the single, 700-mile Langeled pipeline.
Concerns that the Russians are planning a sabotage operation have escalated since one of their spy ships, the Yantar, was detected mapping the UK’s critical underwater infrastructure in the North Sea in recent months.
With the UK reported to have come close to blackouts during the past winter – saved only by emergency reserves and electricity imported undersea from Denmark – security experts have argued that British households should follow the example of the EU, which has advised citizens to pack a three-day survival kit.
This should include water, non-perishable food, medicines, a battery-powered radio, a torch, identity documents and a Swiss Army knife.
The protection of critical undersea infrastructure will form part of the Government’s Strategic Defence Review (SDR) by former Nato secretary-general Lord Robertson this year.
It comes after Moscow was linked to a string of apparent sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea in the past two years, affecting cable and pipeline links. Germany‘s Nord Stream gas pipelines were also sabotaged in 2022.
Separately, the Russians are also believed to have placed listening devices on offshore UK wind turbines in an attempt to track the movement of British submarines.
Moscow was linked to a string of apparent sabotage incidents in the Baltic Sea in the past two years. Pictured: Vladimir Putin
Pictured: Teesside Offshore Windfarm at Redcar off the north east coast of England
A source said: ‘We know that the Russians are active in the North Sea and have the power to cripple our energy links.
‘We need to become much more self-sufficient, and quickly. And households should be ready for all eventualities.’
MPs fear that Ed Miliband’s obsession with Net Zero has made Britain more vulnerable to Russian sabotage.
The Energy Secretary has pledged to make Britain a ‘clean energy superpower’ by using fossil fuels for no more than 5 per cent of its electricity by 2030.
The UK’s last coal power station, at Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Nottinghamshire, was shut down last September, having run since 1967.
The two gigawatts of capacity it once provided was enough to power up to two million homes. In the next few years, the UK is also likely to lose at least two of the nuclear power stations that currently provide a steady supply of electricity and stabilise the entire grid.
That will leave the nation even more reliant on wind and solar farms – where production plummets if the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine – backed up by a fleet of ageing gas-fired power stations.
Sources say the UK’s power supply is currently propped up by a handful of ships arriving each week with supplies of liquefied natural gas from either Qatar or America.
Tory MP Nick Timothy said: ‘The pursuit of decarbonisation at all costs leaves us less secure and with energy prices that are terrible for families and ruinous for business. Ed Miliband is making us more and more dependent on electricity imports.
‘But interconnectors [high-voltage electricity cables] are exposed and vulnerable to attack by hostile states like Russia.’ On January 8 Britain is understood to have come closer than it has for many years to having to impose electricity blackouts.
Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband arrives in Downing Street to attend the weekly Cabinet meeting in London
Pictured: Nord Stream 2, a natural gas pipeline for Europe
A road sign directs traffic towards the Nord Stream 2 gas line landfall facility entrance in Lubmin, north eastern Germany
Freezing temperatures and outages on some interconnectors and gas-fired power stations meant generating capacity was down at a time of peak demand.
Meanwhile, plummeting wind speeds reduced the amount of power that could be generated by the nation’s wind farms. If demand had outstripped supply then grid operators would have been forced to blackout chunks of the country, with analysts reportedly claiming that Birmingham would have been a likely target.
The risk only receded when the UK’s energy system operator forked out about £17million to keep two gas power plants from turning off and a high-voltage cable bringing electricity from Denmark to the UK, called the Viking Link, was also switched on early from a planned maintenance outage to provide more power.
‘We are now massively dependent on electricity imports and we are going to become more dependent on those imports,’ one source said last night.
‘The director general of MI5 has warned about GRU [Russia’s military intelligence service] tactics in Western countries, including sabotage or arson. Energy infrastructure is a sitting duck.’
Fears of Russian sabotage have grown since four cables under the Baltic Sea were severed in just three months.
On Christmas Day the crucial Estlink 2 power cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged by an oil tanker dragging its anchor along the seabed.
And Defence Secretary John Healey last year ordered a Royal Navy Astute-class nuclear submarine to surface yards away from the Russian spy ship Yantar after it was suspected of interfering with subsea cables in the Irish Sea.
The Yantar is believed to be able to deploy a three-man mini-submarine, called Pr1860, which is capable of operating at depths of 20,000 feet.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcomes Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley to Downing Street on April 4
Pipes at the landfall facilities of the ‘Nord Stream 2’ gas pipeline are pictured in Lubmin, northern Germany
It can also deploy an array of remotely operated and autonomous underwater vehicles that security experts fear could be used to lay explosives on pipelines.
The UK’s most important pipeline – the Langeled – runs from the Nyhamna gas processing plant on the Norwegian island of Gossa to the Easington gas terminal in County Durham.
It carries up to 26billion cubic metres of gas to the UK each year – more than a third of what the country consumes annually. Dr Sidharth Kaushal, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a defence thinktank, said: ‘Energy in general and gas in particular is an area of acute concern.
‘I would point to the very heavy reliance on the Langeled pipeline from Norway as being essentially a single point of failure within the system.’
A Government spokesman said: ‘Investing in clean power and the economic opportunity it provides will boost our security and bring down bills.
‘It also removes any dependency on hostile states, which we are countering further in the case of Russia by supporting Ukraine, standing by our Nato allies and disrupting Russian malign activity.’
A Government source said that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer intended to ‘reignite our industrial heartlands’ by investing in carbon capture and storage and creating more wind farms.
They said: ‘We are focused on ensuring that the UK has the defence it needs, with plans to reach 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2027.’
The source added that there were no plans to encourage households to pack survival kits.
