France and the UK

Posted: 7th May 2021

The ties forged in the Sarkozy-Brown era remain, with French state-owned energy giant EDF still in charge of the UK’s nuclear fleet and the only company building new nuclear power plants, other than its controversial Chinese partner CGN. France has been supplying electricity to the UK through an undersea cable since the 1980s, and EDF took a leap into the UK energy retail market in 1998 when it bought London Electricity. A decade later it paid £12.5bn for British Energy, the financially troubled owner of the country’s nuclear power fleet. Those eight nuclear power plants as well as wind farms and other generators mean EDF produces about a fifth of the UK’s power. It has more capacity in the UK than in any market outside France. It also has a retail arm in Britain supplying about 5m accounts, as well as 35,000 car charging points after buying Pod Point. Both sides seem to resist dragging EDF into the post-Brexit political row. They are probably wise to do so, given mutual needs. EDF is now building a new nuclear power station, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, and negotiations have just started with the Government on a potential second plant, Sizewell C in Suffolk. Just as the Government needs EDF, the French company also needs Britain. It hopes Hinkley Point C and Sizewell will help prove the merits of its new EPR reactor technology. Two other projects using the technology, in France and Finland, are facing delays and cost over-runs, although two units in China are operational. Despite the unedifying spectacle in Jersey, many believe that is not a negative. “The notion that one is isolated, especially from Europe, is technologically and spiritually flawed,” says Dr Paul Dorfman at the UCL Energy Institute. “We will continue to be dependent, politically, culturally, technologically and in terms of energy – and that is a very good thing.”