This year's Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) Annual Lecture will be delivered by Alistair Buchanan CBE, chief executive of the Office of the Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem).
He will address the question: 'How secure is Britain's electricity and gas supply over the next decade?' at this special CIBSE event in London on November 7, 2012.

In 2009 when Ofgem published Project Discovery, which provided a root and branch review of Britain's medium term security of supply outlook and was led by Mr Buchanan, the headlines looking out to 2020 were dramatic. It concluded that prices would rise, carbon targets would be hard to achieve and our secure supply of electricity might be at risk.

In 2012 Ofgem was invited by the Government to review both the electricity and gas markets to 2016 and beyond. This speech will focus on the unique challenges facing the UK around these issues, and the Government's responses so far.

CIBSE said: 'This is a key subject for building services engineers and those who are responsible for energy consumption in the built environment, which represents around 40 per cent of the nation's primary energy use.

'As Britain's energy mix changes, with an increased reliance on fuel imports, there will be new interest in more sophisticated tariffs as smart grids and smart meter technology are rolled out across networks which are connected to variable renewable supplies and precocious power loads like data centres.'

CIBSE president David Fisk said: 'This lecture will help to answer the question: what surprises are in store for building services designers, operators and clients?'

The Lecture will be held at the Wellcome Collection in London on Wednesday 7 November at 7pm. It will be broadcast live as a webinar and will also be subsequently made available online at the CIBSE website www.cibse.org

Attendance is free, but booking is essential: www.cibse.org/annuallecture
Previous annual lectures can be found on the CIBSE website.