Breaking! China in secret talks on UK nuclear plant stake -UK ignores other options

Coalition backs investment as fears grow of power cuts, with the Chinese considering a 20 per cent share in the venture

China in secret multi-billion pound talks on UK nuclear plant stake

PUBLISHED: 00:35, 7 October 2012

China is poised to take a multi-billion pound stake in the building of a nuclear power plant in Somerset with French energy giant EDF.

Secret talks are understood to have been taking place for weeks between the two, with the Chinese considering a 20 per cent share in the venture.

British Gas owner Centrica already has a 20 per cent stake in EDF’s nuclear business, which plans to replace the power station at Hinkley Point, Somerset.

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With the spectre of power cuts hitting Britain by 2015 as dirty coal-fired power stations and old nuclear plants are taken out of commission, any moves to increase security of supply will be welcomed by the Government.
John Hayes, the new pro-nuclear Energy Minister, has been to China twice and is in close touch with the delicate negotiations.

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But senior Whitehall sources are confident Beijing remains committed to investing here and are optimistic that a decision will be made shortly.

The UK may be the windiest country in Europe, but other nations already have much greater installed capacity. Spain, for example, occasionally produces 50% of its power from wind turbines with no impact on its electricity grid.

Continued fast expansion in offshore and onshore wind is good news for carbon emissions and can be accommodated without major problems by the grid. Data, not assertions, are what must win the argument over wind – and the data is very clear.

It’s a myth that wind turbines don’t reduce carbon emissions

Wind power replacing gas-fired electricity Sep

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The assertion that wind turbines don’t reduce carbon emissions is a myth, according to conclusive statistical data obtained from National Grid and analysed here in the Guardian for the first time. With a new wind generation record of 4,131 megawatts set on 14 September, the question of how far the UK’s wind generation fleet can help in meeting our climate targets is increasingly controversial. Now it can be shown that the sceptics who lobby against wind simply have their facts wrong.

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On 14 September, wind turbines connected to the National Grid produced over 80 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity, just over 10% of total UK generation. This was far from being a one-off: with more than 4,000 turbines both on and offshore now connected to the grid, wind produced 48 GWh of usable electricity per day on average during September, adding up to about 6% of overall daily national electricity requirement. On many days, wind is now the fourth-largest source of UK electricity, after coal, nuclear and gas. Indeed, this figure is a significant underestimate, because about two gigawatts of wind are connected directly to local networks and so not directly visible to National Grid.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2012/sep/26/myth-wind-turbines-carbon-emissions