Business Secretary Grant Shapps visits the Suffolk coast to mark the signing of contracts.
Image source, Shaun Whitmore/BBCA new £20bn nuclear power plant would help Britain move towards “greater energy independence”, the business secretary said as he backed the plans.
Grant Shapps visited the Suffolk coast to mark the signing of contracts with French energy firm EDF for £700m of government investment in Sizewell C.
He said ministers were also committed to developing other new nuclear projects and the Energy Security Bill.
Critics said there was a “huge amount” of money still to find for the project.
The two-reactor plant, claimed to generate 7% of the UK’s electricity needs, was approved by the government in July, when Boris Johnson was prime minister.
It had been rumoured to be under review, which Downing Street quashed, and then in the Autumn Statement, the chancellor pledged the government’s £700m investment.
The business and energy secretary said with global gas prices at “record highs”, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the nation needed “British energy for British homes”.
“Today’s historic deal giving government backing to Sizewell C’s development is crucial to this, moving us towards greater energy independence and away from the risks that a reliance on volatile global energy markets for our supply comes with.
“This is at the heart of a package of measures that – together with the new Great British Nuclear and powers of the Energy Security Bill – will ensure secure supply for now and for generations to come,” Mr Shapps said.
Image source, Kate Scotter/BBC
Under the deal, the government would become a 50% shareholder in the project’s development with EDF.
It said the move was the first direct government investment in a new nuclear power project since Sizewell B, the last nuclear power station to be built in the UK, was approved for construction in 1987.
Sizewell C would be built next to Sizewell B.
Campaign group Stop Sizewell C said the project could “neither lower energy bills nor give the UK energy independence”.
“Despite the government’s paltry £700m, there is still a huge amount of money to find, and no one is prepared to come clean about what the ultimate cost will be,” it said.
“Sizewell C may have to rely on overseas investors who would pocket UK households’ hard-earned cash. With a French developer, overseas owners and foreign uranium fuel, the claim of energy ‘freedom’ looks pretty hollow.”
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