In Part 2 of this series, Dr Field explains how the UK’s energy crisis is a dual predicament: an energy price crisis, and an energy supply crisis. The UK’s electrical grid is balanced on the wholesale market for natural gas; as wholesale prices rise, people are pushed into energy poverty. Building on Part 1, he demonstrates how natural gas dependency and insufficient UK natural gas storage capacities are threatening electricity blackouts this winter (as well as a crisis of heating), concluding that this crisis was foreseeable and avoidable.
Supporters and opponents of fossil fuel infrastructures offer different visions of an energy transition – and different insights into what they consider meaningful and desirable work. In this post, I reflect on such concerns around work and employment in the context of resistance to the shale gas industry in the north of England.
When I am asked about energy, about fracking, about activism, my mind wonders to an unusual suspect amidst my fieldwork notes, pictures and memories: a hand knitted blanket, a patchwork of the stories from the people that I have met.
