Evening Lecture – The UK’s Need for New Nuclear and the Challenge of Financing Projects

Every Government has to deal with the Energy Trilemma of Security of Supply, Affordability and Sustainability. For the UK, facing narrowing generation margins, consumer resistance to energy price increases and ambitious daunting emission reduction targets, new nuclear generation has been seen as part of the solution.
But new nuclear projects in many countries have a chequered history.
Investors are scrutinizing the scale, timescales, regulatory hurdles and project risks. Nuclear project risk is often as political in nature as it is technical and financial. As a result, to successfully build and finance nuclear power programmes, governments have to be involved in hedging nuclear project risk.
In the UK three consortia are taking forward nuclear new build – EDF Energy at Hinkley Point C; Horizon at Wylfa; and NuGen at Moorside. Will the British model work? And will the UK’s model of 16 GW of new nuclear materialize before its ageing stations retire?