The U.K.’s Energy Crisis Is an Opportunity for Batteries
Paying today for the insurance of storage and redundancy would mitigate the volatility of tomorrow.
The wrong kind of hoarding.
Photographer: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images
Hoarding is how we maintain civilization and also how we end it. A good example of the latter is on display in the U.K., where the keep-calm-and-carry-on brigade have devolved into filling plastic water bottles with flammable fuel. Similar to the more daredevil plastic-bag fillers who sprung up stateside during the Colonial Pipeline hack, Brits pre-emptively topping up tanks on reports of fuel shortages help to foster the very thing they fear most.
Yet hoarding, of the organized type, is also vital to helping things run smoothly most of the time. Oil tanks and caverns full of stored natural gas are tranquilizers for energy markets (and ultimately consumers) apt to freak out at the slightest hint of disruption. Keep this in mind as the arguments over energy crunches and decarbonization heat up.