Energy secretary Ed Miliband has signed today (22 July) the final investment decision for Sizewell C after years of delays and uncertainty over the project.
The funding model is based on the approximate £38bn cost of constructing the Suffolk nuclear power station and is spread between consumers, taxpayers and private investors.
The government has confirmed it will take an initial 44.9% stake to become the single biggest equity shareholder in the project.
The new Sizewell C shareholders include Canadian investment fund La Caisse with 20%, British multinational energy company Centrica with 15%, and international investment manager Amber Infrastructure, with an initial 7.6%.
This comes alongside French energy giant EDF, which is leading the power station’s construction and taking a 12.5% stake in the project. In addition, EDF has a proposed £5bn debt guarantee from France’s export credit agency, Bpifrance Assurance Export, to back its commercial bank loans.
Alongside this investment, the National Wealth Fund – the government’s principal investor and policy bank – is making its first investment in nuclear energy.
The government said that this funding model represents a saving of around 20% compared with Hinkley Point C and demonstrates the value of building “a virtual replica project”.
Nuclear goals
Sizewell C was one of eight sites identified in 2009 by then energy secretary Ed Miliband as a potential location for new nuclear. However, the project struggled with funding in the 14 years that followed under subsequent governments.
Miliband said: “It is time to do big things and build big projects in this country again – and today we announce an investment that will provide clean, homegrown power to millions of homes for generations to come.”
Reacting to the announcement, AtkinsRéalis’s managing director for nuclear in EMEA, Chris Conboy, said: “The final investment decision in Sizewell C is a fantastic outcome for our future energy resilience and an inflexion point for the UK’s nuclear supply chain.
“Today’s green light will ensure the knowledge and skills honed at Hinkley Point C will continue to flow through to Sizewell C’s planning, design, and throughout programme delivery. This maximises opportunities for replication, which we know is vital to deliver new nuclear efficiently, and it will help to maintain the UK’s world-class skills base in readiness for the UK’s ambitious net-zero and nuclear 2050 goals.”
It baffles me how funding is continuing to be pumped into nuclear megaprojects when it has been proven time and time again that they fundamentally fail in programme and cost (Book: How Big Things Get Done) and fail to deliver the energy savings and efficiencies they were built for. If the government is serious about modernising our energy and nuclear infrastructure and propelling the UK into complete energy resilience and independence then they need to focus their efforts on delivering the most effective and efficient solutions across the country, not on the megaproject scale, but on the local scale on mass. I.e. countrywide use of small modular reactors and localised heat recovery networks as examples.