We often had to use candles for lighting during the Second World War, when power lines were down. It wasn’t much better during the three-day week and blackouts in the Seventies, but I hadn’t expected that I might need them again.

Power failures are not just restricted to war-battered countries, like Iraq. Recently, California had rolling blackouts as the generating industry failed to cope with the demand. Melbourne is also now struggling because of the need for air conditioning during record temperatures.

It could be our turn next, for reasons that are self-inflicted. It’s not just that the world demand for electricity is increasing, with another billion-plus people, rising standards of living, and the use of electricity for heating and transport when oil and gas supplies are exhausted.

It’s also about planning ahead and it could be that the UK has left it a bit late. Our mix of technologies is not helpful, with 40 per cent of our electricity from gas, 33 per cent coal, only 19 per cent from nuclear and barely four per cent from renewables – the rest is either oil or imported.

Many of our coal-fired power stations need replacing, as by 2015 they will exceed the European standards for the production of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The Government is seeking to delay the necessary technical adaptations as this will increase the cost of the electricity, as will the carbon credits they will now have to purchase.

It is unlikely that new coal plants will be approved if they can’t capture and store CO2. That isn’t yet possible, though building new ones that can be converted to capture and storage in the future will be suggested as a stop-gap.

There wouldn’t be too much of a threat if the nuclear power stations were working well, but they’re not; they are on borrowed time. Two of the ten are closed most of the time, another two have been half-closed for months, and two more can only run at three-quarters of their potential output.

So more than half our electricity is from coal, using old technologies that cause climate change, and from nuclear plants fast approaching their sell by date. Additionally, much of the rest is from gas, and 80 per cent of that will be imported by 2020.

It takes more than five years to build a new power station, so it will be important for us to reduce our electricity use if we don’t want to rely on candles again.