Britain’s energy security and carbon-reduction goals would have been put at risk if UK prime minister Theresa May had halted the £20bn Hinkley Point nuclear power project, senior government officials have said.
Senior civil servants involved in the 2013 deal with EDF, the French state-owned energy group, to build Britain’s first new nuclear plant since the 1990s said on Monday that they still believed the project represented good value for money, despite mounting criticisms over its high cost to consumers.
They told a parliamentary committee that the 3,200 megawatts of generating capacity expected from Hinkley Point by 2025 — satisfying about 7 per cent of UK demand — would be critical to keeping Britain’s lights on while reducing carbon emissions.