Boris Johnson + Sizewell C

Posted: 2nd September 2022

Boris Johnson is poised to give approval this week for a nuclear power station costing up to £30 billion as ministers close in on a deal to reopen Britain’s biggest gas storage facility. The prime minister is preparing to announce an in-principle agreement to offer funding to the Sizewell C reactor in Suffolk before he leaves office, despite concerns about creating a multibillion-pound spending commitment for Liz Truss, the frontrunner to succeed him. Johnson acknowledged yesterday that “it is going to be tough through to next year” because of the rising energy bills but said his successor would “provide a further package of support for helping people with the cost of energy”. Johnson is thought to have privately decided to go ahead with Sizewell C earlier in the summer, but said yesterday that a public announcement was imminent. “We are going to have a long-term British energy security strategy, and we are putting in more nuclear — you’re going to be hearing more about that later this week,” he said on a visit to Dorset. Johnson also promised “absolutely shedloads of wind power” as he sought to pin the blame for high gas prices on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Be in absolutely no doubt that the gas price is being driven by what Putin did in Ukraine,” he said. “I’m not going to shrink from this — it is going to be tough in the months to come, it’s going to be tough through to next year, and that’s because of Putin’s war in Ukraine. But we’re going to get through it.” Kwarteng is also said to be in the final stages of agreeing a deal with Centrica to reopen the Rough gas storage facility under the North Sea, in an about-turn that could leave taxpayers on the hook for hundreds of millions of pounds if the company does not make as much as expected.