Modern society is vitally dependent on a reliable supply of electricity and a sustained failure in the electricity system would have dramatic consequences. It would result in a catastrophic failure of communications and of many services on which the country now heavily dependents. It would have an impact on the country’s economy and on public safety to a much greater extent than even a decade ago. It would take an improbable concatenation of events to put the lights out nationally. National Grid has tools at its disposal to increase capacity or reduce demand, and the Committee are confident that it has the ability to maintain national electricity supply. The National Grid procured extra capacity to raise the capacity margin from 4.1% to 6.1% this winter and guard against a potential shortage of electricity. It is a matter for concern, however, that this extra capacity was put in place at short notice, at considerable cost, and in a way which conflicts with the decarbonisation agenda. The electricity market is now a managed market. The pursuit of decarbonisation makes a free market in electricity supply impossible while low-carbon sources of power are more costly than high-carbon ones. The Committee do not think that the Government has sufficiently informed the public that, with the present and foreseeable state of technology, it is not possible for the electricity supply to be low-cost, resilient and low-carbon all at the same time