Britain would switch off its power stations before it cut off one gas boiler

On the highest gas demand day in five years, gas plant was generating the equivalent of 64% of Britain's electricity. In a shortage it goes before any home loses its gas, and the steps that should come first were empty or missing.

Ed Conway's Sky News film last week went inside National Gas's control room to watch a rehearsal of the day Britain runs short of gas. It is worth a watch. It sets out the order in which the country would be switched off:

1. Stop gas exports to mainland Europe. "If we were exporting, they would be your largest load and they would go first." Not Ireland, which is never cut.

2. Shut down gas-fired power stations, "the next set of large loads".

3. Isolate sections of the local gas networks, cutting off homes.

Electricity has a room like it, and it is also secret. NESO kindly gave me a tour of its electricity control room after I published the kilowatts.io dashboard last December. ITN filmed inside it on the day in 2024 that Britain's last coal power station closed. One fun fact from the tour: the wall-wide circuit map shows Britain on its side, with east at the top and west at the bottom.

I went to the data to see how much gas sits on each rung. The answer changes what the ladder means. The first rung is empty on the days it would be needed, there are rungs missing, and the order itself says something uncomfortable about which energy customers Britain protects.