Great British Energy's budget has been nuked

The Guardian

a day ago

There was a weirdness in the government's welcome announcement earlier this week that Rolls-Royce SMR had been selected as preferred bidder to build the UK's first small modular nuclear reactors, and that £2.5bn of public money would be thrown behind the project. The government body backing the project was something called Great British Energy – Nuclear.
This, it turned out, was the new name for Great British Nuclear, the unit set up in 2023 by the last government to oversee delivery of the nuclear programme. But why risk confusion with Great British Energy, Ed Miliband's publicly-owned company for investing, we thought, in renewables projects such as wind, solar and hydro with a side-mission to ensure that lots of the kit is manufactured in the UK?
The confusion, it seems, was deliberate. The chancellor's spending review revealed that every penny of the £2.5bn for SMRs is coming from GB Energy's £8.3bn budget. That is 30% of the pot to SMRs in one gulp.
One could argue, as Labour folk did, that nuclear and renewables are all part of the same low-carbon clean energy mix, so they go hand-in-hand and were always intended to do so. It's true that past descriptions of GB Energy's role have sometimes mentioned nuclear, but never as the headline act. It was never spelled out, for example, that the entirety of public support for SMRs would come from GB Energy's budget, which would be a relevant fact to mention if you were worried that the Tories had set up Great British Nuclear but not given it funding. It rather looks as if GB Energy's budget has been nuked by the Treasury.
'Labour will capitalise Great British Energy with £8.3bn over the next parliament,' said the manifesto and, strictly speaking, that pledge is still being honoured. It's just that GB Energy will be directing almost a third of its allocation to the nuclear body that we had previously regarded as a separate unit.
But it does make GB Energy a strange beast if it is now the main government vehicle for investing in SMRs, a cutting-edge technology that tends to involve permanently big numbers and follow-on rounds of funding. GB Energy's initial adventures, note, have been low-key and local – funding for installing solar panels on schools and hospitals, for example. Worthy stuff, but a million miles away from the development of next-generation nuclear technology.
GB Energy will be expanding into new and exciting areas later this year, say Labour insiders. We'll see what that brings. The company's core mission seems to be a work-in-progress.