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There’s a video doing the rounds on social media that explains how the UK’s foreign policy toward Europe hasn’t changed in 500 years. It’s from a political sitcom written more than 30 years ago but still sounds plausible.

Sadly the writers didn’t imagine how the UK leaving the EU would go, so the current UK government will have to figure that out for itself. At the moment it looks like it will take at least a couple of years to get any real certainty on what the UK’s future relationship with the EU will be.

Meanwhile, it’s business as usual from the EU side on energy issues. Fears that the UK might miss out on EU funding for energy projects are so far unfounded. The UK benefited from two EU grants for electricity infrastructure post-Brexit vote in July – Eur14.82 million for the Viking Link between Denmark and the UK, and Eur8.28 million for the UK’s compressed air energy storage project at Larne in Northern Ireland.

Both of these projects are part of the EU’s Northern Seas offshore wind grid priority corridor, intended to link all the countries in the region to smooth out demand and supply variations.

As a net importer of gas and also increasingly of electricity, the UK needs these links to other countries, as we show in this video. UK power prices are likely to stay at a premium to the rest of Europe, so the business case for more links remains, as long as the UK’s policies on carbon do not change, as we explain in this pre-Brexit vote podcast.

The UK will also be included in a whole raft of EU energy proposals expected from the European Commission this year, as it is still a fully paid up EU member with all the rights and obligations that involves. The timing is awkward, as the EU is in the middle of a widespread update to much of its energy legislation, mainly to meet 2030 targets on greenhouse gas emissions, renewable energies and energy efficiency, but also to improve gas and electricity supply security.

For example, in February the EU proposed an updated EU gas supply security regulation, which included fixed groupings of countries that would have to work with each other on regional ris...