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Don’t be surprised if the UK tax-payer, not France, ends up paying the astronomic costs of Hinkley C nuclear power station .

Should we be bothered that Hinkley C nuclear power station has run even further over
budget (the latest estimate is £35 billion, nearly twice that quoted when
the project was given the go-ahead in 2016) and that its completion date
has been put back yet further, to 2031?

After all, the whole point of offering French energy giant EDF a guaranteed ‘strike price’ at the then juicy rate of £92.50 per megawatt-hour (at 2013 prices, rising with
inflation) was supposed to be to transfer financial risk to EDF and its
financial backers. ‘It is important to say that British consumers won’t
pay a penny, with the increased costs met entirely by shareholders,’ EDF’s
managing director of the Hinkley project state this morning.

I wouldn’t be so confident. Yet more delays to Hinkley C punch a huge hole in the
government’s net zero plans, which include the full decarbonisation of the
national grid by 2035 (Labour says it will do it by 2030). By 2028, all but
one of the UK’s existing five nuclear power stations are due to close – and
the other one, Sizewell B, is due to be gone by 2035. From generating
nearly a third of the UK’s power at its peak in 1998 the nuclear industry
could be down to virtually nothing by the time Hinkley C eventually opens.

No-one should be surprised if, before we get to 2031, EDF goes cap in hand
to the government, and the government offers it some kind of deal which
transfers risk back onto the taxpayer.

Spectator 24th Jan 2024

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/hinkley-c-and-the-rising-cost-of-net-zero/

January 28, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics international, UK