Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the UK energy myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
A senior Treasury minister has said he is confident private financing for the Sizewell C nuclear power station will be “teed up” in time for a final investment decision in June over whether to proceed with the delayed project.
Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, told the Financial Times that the crunch point for the planned project in Suffolk was coming in just 10 weeks, at the time of the government’s three-year spending review.
“We have to make the final investment decision [FID] which we will do at the spending review,” he said. “FID will be taken in June.”
Jones added: “You wouldn’t take FID unless you’ve got all of your investors teed up. We will do.”
The UK government and French energy group EDF, the initial backers of Sizewell C, have been trying to raise billions of pounds from investors and had previously hoped to reach a final decision on investment last year.
But the process has dragged on and the price tag has soared since its £20bn estimate given as recently as 2020.
Government officials and industry executives expect Sizewell C will get billions of pounds of funding from British taxpayers alongside investment from sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors.
The government has been negotiating with investors including Centrica, Emirates Nuclear Energy Company, Amber Infrastructure Group and Schroders Greencoat. They may not invest and ministers could yet balk at the huge costs of the project.
But Jones said the government had already released a couple of billion pounds for the current year for enabling works at the site.
“The reason we delayed [FID last year] is because we wanted to align it with the spending review and the infrastructure, because it is such a big part of what we’re doing,” he told the FT.
Jones’ comments comes as EDF chief executive Luc Rémont was ousted by the French government. Rémont is leaving the state-owned group after disagreements over strategy and a failure to advance French plans for six new reactors.
Bernard Fontana, his successor, will not be confirmed in his role until French parliamentary and senate hearings at the end of April, which could further delay EDF’s work on new French and UK nuclear projects.
Jones was speaking to the FT ahead of the launch of the “National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority”. The new quango is designed to get a grip on inadequate infrastructure and delays to major projects, symbolised by the UK’s costly HS2 rail scheme.
The minister said the new body — the result of a merger of two previous quangos — would bring together infrastructure strategy and delivery as a new “centre of expertise on infrastructure”.
“We know we can’t get anything built on time or on budget in this country pretty much . . . basically every other country is better than us,” he said. “So we need a new approach to make sure infrastructure delivery is successful.”
Jones said NISTA will oversee the work of 250 officials and will be supervised by a new advisory council made up of industry experts.
The minister said the government will produce a new infrastructure strategy at the same time as the spending review, setting out its priorities for new transport, energy and water projects.
The strategy would set out the government’s position on the role of private capital across all types of infrastructure, such as social housing, defence and digital, Jones said.
He added that ministers should confirm their favoured financing option for the £10bn Lower Thames Crossing, which received the go-ahead from the government last week, in the June spending review.
The private sector is expected to finance much of the project. The 14-mile road and tunnel will be the first wholly new Thames river crossing east of London in 60 years.
Additional reporting by Ian Johnston and Rachel Millard
