Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to prevent electricity shortages in the winter of 2016-17.

The UK will not face a power shortage in winter 2016/17. National Grid has the right tools they need to manage the system and will ensure that they continue to do so.

National Grid has already procured 3.6GW of reserve capacity for next winter and, in January, the Capacity Market Transitional Arrangements auction bought 800MW of demand side response capacity for winter 16/17 which will also help secure the system. In addition, National Grid has the option to procure further demand side balancing reserve for 2016/17.