Rocketing gas prices — up 35% last week — have put the spotlight on Britain’s looming energy crisis. With North Sea oil and gas running out, we are becoming dependent on imports and risk being left at the mercy of world prices.

The government hopes two new sources of power, wind and nuclear, will bolster Britain’s supply and at the same time help to meet ambitious targets to cut greenhouse-gas emissions.

Both are in trouble. The planned expansion of wind power is being held up by a myriad of obstacles from planning objections to electricity grid constraints. The cost of investment is huge and likely to lead to even more rises in household electricity bills.

And last week the French pulled out of negotiations to buy British Energy, which runs our nuclear power stations, plunging the sector into uncertainty.

THE problems with wind power can be illustrated by the experience of Amec, the project management group.

Since the early 1990s the company had been working on plans for a wind farm near Hexham in Northumberland. This year it was given a letter from the Ministry of Defence objecting to the construction of the farm. The MoD said the 20 proposed turbines, along with two adjacent projects, would have an “unacceptable impact” on the radar systems at the Royal Air Force base at Spadeadam.

Amec was furious. It had been in contact with the MoD since 1993 about plans for a wind farm in the area and had never been told of any problems with the proposal. Now, 15 years on and nearly two years after Amec began the formal planning process, the MoD said the 125-metre towers would “clutter” radar systems and increase the likelihood of an “air disaster”.

The problem, it emerged, was that MoD technicians had wrongly mapped the positions of the turbines. Once the error was spotted, it turned out that they would be in the line of sight of Spadeadam’s two air-traffic control radars. The MoD’s blunder had suddenly left years of work, and millions of pounds of investment, blowing in the wind.

It was almost comically tragic. Yet the situation was sadly typical for Amec’s fledgling wind business. After nearly a decade, the company has managed to get only one wind farm approved; seven others have been rejected or are stuck in planning. It is no wonder that chief executive Samir Brikho, also chairman of the government’s Energy Excellence Group, decided to stop the bleeding. He put the business up for sale last month.

Even with all the problems Amec has faced, it seemed an odd move for the company. Britain is on the verge of one of the most ambitious wind-energy projects in the world as it strives to meet emissions targets and to free itself from reliance on imported energy.

Yet Amec’s experience is just a taster of the problems that stand in the way of industry and the government as they set out to achieve Gordon Brown’s 2020 goal of ringing Britain with up to 7,000 offshore wind turbines, capable of producing more than a quarter of the nation’s electricity. Today, wind power in Britain supplies only 2.5GW — one gigawatt being enough to power about 750,000 homes.

It will be a huge industrial undertaking. “We estimate that to meet renewable targets, industry will have to spend about £100 billion by 2020. It’s an unprecedented level of investment,” said Paul Golby, chief executive of Eon UK, the German-owned group that is one of Britain’s biggest power companies. Wind is expected to account for at least £60 billion of the total.

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