UK Could Be Facing Blackouts Soon

EU regulations, the euro crisis and power station failures could put lights out in the winter

An "unprecedented combination" of the eurozone crisis, tough EU environmental laws and the closure of ageing coal and oil-fired power stations, has increased "the risk to consumers' energy supplies", Ofgem said in its annual Electricity Capacity Assessment on Friday.

The regulator, which first highlighted the problems in its Project Discovery report in 2009, said: "Today's report shows that these problems have not gone away."