Sizewell C gets £38bn sign-off with support of Centrica and France
Energy secretary Ed Miliband has signed off on a £38bn deal to build Sizewell C, with Canadian investment fund La Caisse, British Gas owner Centrica and French state companies lining up to back the nuclear power station.
In a final decision signed off by Miliband, the government has agreed to be the largest equity shareholder in the project – which had been slated to cost £20bn – with an “initial” stake of 44.9 per cent.
The newly-created National Wealth Fund will provide the majority of Sizewell C’s debt finance alongside French public credit agency Bpifrance Assurance Export, which is providing £5bn in dent guarantee, to support its building.
La Caisse will take a 20 per cent share in Sizewell C while Centrica’s stake will be 15 per cent.
Other investors in Sizewell C include French state-owned firm EDF and UK-based group Amber Infrastructure, who respectively account for 12.5 per cent and 7.6 per cent of shareholdings.
Infrastructure investment firm International Public Partnerships (INPP) also said it was a stakeholder alongside Amber, committing £250m to the project.
The project is being partly funded by a structure called the Regulated Asset Base, which is a charge on top of electricity bills that funds major projects and offers investors guaranteed returns.
Miliband said it was “time to do big things and build big projects in this country again”, with the confirmation of investment set to provide clean power to “millions of homes for generations to come”.
“This government is making the investment needed to deliver a new golden age of nuclear, so we can end delays and free us from the ravages of the global fossil fuel markets to bring bills down for good,” Miliband added.
Sizewell C set to support jobs
Sizewell C is set to create 10,000 jobs and create savings of £2bn a year in the future low-carbon electricity system, according to internal government analysis.
The government also believes some 3,500 businesses could benefit from the nuclear power station.
“Delivering next generation, publicly-owned clean power is vital to our energy security and growth, which is why we backed Sizewell C,” Chancellor Rachel Reeves said.
“La Caisse, Centrica and Amber’s multi-billion pound investment is a powerful endorsement of the UK as the best place to do business and as a global hub for nuclear energy.”
Julia Pyke and Nigel Cann, who are joint managing directors of Sizewell C, pointed to a 70 per cent construction spending commitment to the UK as evidence the project would create “thousands of jobs” despite concerns large infrastructure projects fail to get over the line given costly delays to HS2.
“We are determined to deliver this major infrastructure differently, and to make sure this is a project Britain can be proud of,” they said.
Ofgem chief Jonathan Brearley said he was “working closely” with the government to develop new regulations to drive investment in nuclear energy.