Sizewell C final investment decision unlikely before 2024 year end

Financial sector publication Bloomberg reported that anonymous sources close to the project said negotiations between potential private investors were moving more slowly than had been expected.

The Fid had already been delayed by the general election, but new energy secretary Ed Miliband indicated his support for Sizewell in an early speech to parliament before the 2024 summer recess.

Bloomberg reported negotiations with Centrica, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation, Amber Infrastructure Group and Schroders Greencoat are ongoing.

Earlier in July, Centrica chief executive officer Chris O’Shea said: “An investment decision this year would be dependent upon how the government and the Sizewell company want to move.

“We are able to move as quickly as the other parties, but I think we should be realistic that the government have been in office less than three weeks and they need to figure out what they want to do.”

Before the general election, the then energy secretary Claire Coutinho issued a written statement about the proposed nuclear power station at Wylfa in north Wales where she also commented on the in-development Suffolk nuclear station, saying: “We intend to take a final investment decision on Sizewell C before the end of this Parliament.”

It can be assumed that Coutinho was unaware that the end date of the current parliament was due to be brought forward by the calling of the general election.

The then nuclear minister Andrew Bowie had also said that a Fid was due before the end of the previous parliament.

New nuclear formed a significant component of the previous government’s plans to decarbonise the electricity grid, as laid out in its Civil nuclear: Roadmap to 2030 strategy.

The strategy laid out plans to increase nuclear power by four times its current amount, which will account for almost a quarter of the UK’s electricity demands in 2050. The plans included the construction of a new power station as big as Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C.

In July 2024, Miliband expressed his desire to utilise all forms of zero and low carbon electricity generation technologies and said Great British Energy, the new publicly owned energy company, “will of course have a strong interest in nuclear power” and namechecked small modular reactors (SMRs) and Sizewell C.

In 2022, the government announced it had used taxpayer money to remove Chinese state-owned China General Nuclear Power Group’s stake from the ownership of Sizewell C, at a time of rising political tensions between the UK and China.

Appearing before the House of Commons Liaison Committee on 26 March 2024, the prime minister highlighted the government’s work to deal with the “threat” that China poses to the UK’s critical national infrastructure and specifically cited the government’s decision to remove the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN) as co-owners of Sizewell C.

CGN is still a co-owner of Hinkley Point C, alongside the French state-owned energy company EDF Energy.

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