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British nuclear lobby now going after government subsidies

UK-subsidy 2016Government could part-fund new UK nuclear plants, NuGen suggests, Telegraph UK,    Emily Gosden, energy editor 5 NOVEMBER 2016

Taxpayers could shoulder the multibillion-pound cost of civil engineering works for new nuclear power plants to make them easier to finance and reduce their impact on energy bills, the company seeking to build reactors in Cumbria has suggested.

Tom Samson, chief executive of NuGen, proposed reviewing how the different elements of new nuclear plants could be “carved up in different way to allow the Government to take a role in some of the enabling infrastructure”.

This could include funding major aspects of construction such as “the civil works”, he told a House of Lords committee.Mr Samson’s company wants to build three Westinghouse reactors at Moorside, near Sellafield in Cumbria, in a 3.8-gigawatt project he said was expected to cost up to £15bn.

But financing presents a major challenge for the project, which is 60pc owned by Japan’s Toshiba and 40pc by France’s Engie, formerly GDF Suez. It has been in talks with potential investors for months about a deal.

Under the funding model used for the £18bn Hinkley Point nuclear plant, developer EDF is to shoulder the full cost of construction in return for a 35-year contract from the Government guaranteeing it subsidies for the electricity it eventually produces.

These will be levied on consumer energy bills and could cost as much as £30bn.

But the model has been criticised as inefficient and expensive.

Even EDF, which is majority-owned by the French government, struggled to raise enough funds for the construction, raising major questions about how non-state-owned groups like Toshiba could hope to…….

NuGen is already lobbying via the Cumbrian Local Enterprise Partnership for Government assistance in improving the transport infrastructure in the Cumbrian area to help support both decommissioning operations at Sellafield and the proposed construction site at Moorside.

Ministers are reported to have commissioned a study earlier this year to consider alternative funding models, which also suggested the Government could take direct stakes in future projects.

Earlier this year rival developer Horizon warned that the Government needed to come up with a framework that was palatable for private investors, not just state companies like EDF….. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/11/05/government-could-part-fund-new-uk-nuclear-plants-nugen-suggests/

November 8, 2016 - Posted by | politics, UK

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