hinkley C

 “With this deal George Osborne is not so much backing the wrong horse as betting billions of consumers’ money on a nag running backwards. There’s no end in sight for the nuclear industry’s dependence on billion-pound handouts whilst the renewable sector is on the verge of going subsidy free. Backing the former and punishing the latter makes no economic sense whatsoever. Our grandchildren will one day wonder why their bills are propping up a foreign-owned, outdated, and costly nuclear industry instead of supporting cutting-edge UK firms producing cheap clean energy.

Energy giant EDF has formally asked the French government for permission to delay the start of its EPR nuclear reactor in Flamanville until 2020. The French utility had been set a 2017 deadline to get the reactor up and running.    

The news comes as an initial agreement to build a new £24.5bn reactor of the same type at Hinkley is about to be unveiled by UK and Chinese authorities later today. 

 The UK government wants to grant unprecedented levels of public subsidies and disproportionately favourable conditions for the mainly state-owned French energy giant EDF to build two new nuclear reactors at Hinkley, in the south-west of England. The Commission is currently investigating the UK plan for a possible breach of EU competition rules.

UK ministers unsuccessfully lobbied the EU executive until the very last minute to make nuclear energy eligible for aid under the new rules.

In response to the announcement of the Hinkley deal, Greenpeace UK Executive Director John Sauven said:

“Hinkley C fails every test – economic, consumer, and environmental. It will lock a generation of consumers into higher energy bills, via a strike price that’s nearly double the current price of electricity, and it will distort energy policy by displacing newer, cleaner, technologies that are dropping dramatically in price.