Hinkley Point C delays and closure of other nuclear stations leave UK facing ‘crunch point’, analysis finds.

Delays to French-built nuclear power stations will leave the UK at risk of blackouts by 2028, new research has warned.

A “perfect storm” of increased demand because of net zero, the closure of existing nuclear power stations and delays to the delivery of Hinkley Point C, which is being built by French state-owned power company EDF, will leave the country facing a “crunch point” that risks blackouts. The Telegraph has the story.

It coincides with new government data showing consumers will have £2.8bn added to their bills in 2028 – about £100 per householder – to pay power station owners to provide generating capacity.

Analysis by Public First predicts that the UK’s demand for power will exceed baseload capacity by 7.5GW at peak times by 2028 – a shortfall equivalent to the power used by more than 7 million homes.

A shortfall is expected as ageing British power infrastructure is set to close in the coming years. Ratcliffe-on-Soar, the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station, is scheduled to shut down this year.

Hartlepool and Heysham I nuclear power stations will be decommissioned in March 2026 and Heysham II and Torness come offline in March 2028.

At the same time, demand for electricity is expected to increase sharply as Britain shifts away from fossil fuels and adopts technology such as electric vehicles and heat pumps.

The warning comes amid a political row between Westminster and Paris over who will pay for cost overruns on the long-delayed Hinkley Point C nuclear reactor, which was scheduled to open in 2025 at the time of approval but will now not come online until at least 2031.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has demanded “an equitable sharing of costs” but the UK Government insisted the EDF-led development must be privately financed.

The cost of building Hinkley Point C, which is under construction in Somerset, has risen from £18bn to £46bn – equivalent to £700 for everyone in the UK.

Public First’s warning is politically highly sensitive as it implies the UK could face power shortages and consequent increases in prices, or even the risk of blackouts, around the time of a general election.

The report, Mind the Gap: Exploring Britain’s energy crunch, was commissioned by Drax Power, the owner of the controversial Drax power station that once burned coal but is now fuelled largely by wood chips imported from “sustainable” forests in North America.

It generates about 4pc of the UK’s electricity but is reliant on taxpayer subsidies that last year earned Drax £617m, but which comes to an end in 2027. Drax is lobbying politicians to extend those subsidies.

The report said expected shortfalls in generation capacity will leave the UK even more dependent on international generation – meaning power imported via undersea cable from France, Norway and other European countries.

Read the full story here.