The UK capacity has also been closed down, all coal fired power stations are now being mothballed early. Recently we have a spell of calm windless weather and we had an acute shortage of electricity generation, leaving us scrambling for electricity supply. We are still reliant on the French supplying electricity via the The National Grid and its French counterpart, RTE, already own a 2GW interconnector between the two countries which has been in use since 1986.
Its cable provide a valuable source of energy at a time when coal-fired stations were being closed down and planned new gas and nuclear installations were yet to be built. However, we may see some capacity free up when the Irish interconnector (uses upto 10% of UK total capacity) is switched off as the Irish look to France with their new interconnector.
The UK is far from being self sufficient on electricity generation and leaves us exposed to becalmed weather, disputes and price hikes with our continental neighbours. Last projection I noted was that electricity demand would double by 2050.
In 2018 the UK remained a net importer of energy (all types, gas, electricity, oil and coal) at 36 per cent, down marginally from 2017. In 2018 the UK was a net importer of all main fuel types, we only produced 64% of our total energy needs. If electricity has to replace the energy consumed from other sources eg oil, gas ,this is not resolved yet by any stretch of the imagination and lead in times for such major projects are not conducive to early resolution anytime soon..
The fact that our government allowed the nation's energy infrastructure assets to be sold off to foreign companies is indeed deeply concerning regarding our energy security, as des depending on foreign investment to develop more assets.
I think there might have been a bit of misinterpretation in your source for the 'doubled demand by 2050' thing. The National Grid strategy docs state we need 40GW of new capacity by 2050, but this is not in addition to the existing 40GW capacity, but as replacement for old kit going out of commission. There also seems to be a bit of misinformation/lack of understanding about what the energy sector is actually doing to ensure continuity of energy supply going forward. A very good source for an overview can be found here:
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/document/173821/downloadFor up to date information on the UK's demand and energy sources, Gridwatch is an excellent source, updated live from grid data.
https://gridwatch.co.uk I spent the last 15 years of my career working in the UK electricity supply industry and am very happy to help in providing an analysis of information sources, they are not always quite as accurate as we might like to believe.
