Good Summary, Hinkley, Sizewell, EdF

Letter: It’s been reported that EDF, under pressure from French national auditors, is still desperately looking for investors in Hinkley Point C (HPC) to replace lost top-up funding from its Chinese partner, CGN. Despite having talks with lots of potential investors, EDF has been unable to proceed with any of them. HPC was initially expected to cost £18 billion and to be completed in 2025, but the estimated cost has increased to roughly £46 billion in 2024 terms and the start date has been pushed back to 2029 at the earliest, possibly as late as 2031, because of construction delays. The UK government is also trying to drum up investors for the Sizewell C (SZC) project in Suffolk. EDF only wants to invest up to 20 per cent of the estimated cost in the project. The government is hoping to make a final investment decision on SZC in June. In January, France’s state auditor said EDF should not proceed with SZC until it had cut its exposure to HPC. It seems quite likely that EDF is threatening to withdraw from SZC unless the government bails them out on HPC. EDF has already been given an overly generous index-linked contract to supply electricity from HPC to British consumers at around £130/MWh (at today’s prices) compared to today’s cost of electricity from wind at £44MWh. There should be no more government handouts to French government-owned EDF. If they can’t afford to build it on such generous terms, they should stop now. SZC would be funded in a different way to HPC, which could cost British consumers as much as £100 billion – official cost estimates do not include the cost of the finance needed to build Sizewell. The obvious thing to do is to cancel SZC now before any more taxpayers’ money is wasted and resist pressure from EDF for us to bail them out on HPC.