How long will it take for Sizewell C power station to make energy bills lower?

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3 days ago

Rachel Reeves has signed off on £14.2 billion of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant, in a bid to give the UK more control over its energy supplies and to tackle the climate crisis.
The Chancellor is set to confirm the funding for the new plant in Suffolk at the GMB Congress on Tuesday ahead of the Treasury's spending review on Wednesday.
It will mark the first nuclear power plant to be completed in more than half-a-century, with the site expected to produce enough power for six million homes when it opens.
Energy secretary Ed Miliband said the UK needs "new nuclear" to deliver "a golden age of clean energy abundance" to bring down energy bills and "tackle the climate crisis".
However, campaigners have warned that the final bill for the project will be far higher than expected, with one group describing it as "HS2 mark 2", and fear the plant may be "obsolete" by the time it is built.
So, will the Sizewell C nuclear plant lower our energy bills? And if so, how long will it take?
Sizewell C will be located near the small fishing village of Sizewell, on the Suffolk coast between Aldeburgh and Southwold.
It is being built next to Sizewell B, a pressurised water reactor nuclear power plant, which began operating in 1995 and is the last nuclear plant to be completed in the UK.
Some locals fear the environmental impact of Sizewell C. Jenny Kirtley of the Together Against Sizewell C group told ITV News: "You've only got to look around the area and see the devastation that's happened.
"There are a huge mountains of earth everywhere and of course the wildlife is suffering. The deer don't know where to go. They're rambling around everywhere. The birds are leaving their nests."
Also concerned about the impact on the local economy, Kirtley added: "We've got 6,000 people living around here so where are people going to live? We know rents are going sky-high so it's going to get worse."
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The chancellor has signed off on £14.2 billion of investment to build the new Sizewell C nuclear plant.
Meanwhile Rolls-Royce has been named as the preferred bidder to build small modular reactors (SMRs) in a programme backed by £2.5 billion of taxpayers' cash.
The government said its investment will go towards creating 10,000 jobs, including 1,500 apprenticeships, and support thousands more jobs across the UK.
The company Sizewell C has already signed £330 million in contracts with local companies, with 70% of contracts predicted to go to 3,500 British suppliers.
Alison Downes of the Stop Sizewell C campaign group, said ministers have not "come clean" about the full cost of the project, which her group previously estimated could come to around £40 billion.
'Where is the benefit for voters in ploughing more money into Sizewell C that could be spent on other priorities, and when the project will add to consumer bills and is guaranteed to be late and overspent just like Hinkley C?," she said.
Miliband has denied suggestions that the project will be 'HS2 mark 2' – a reference to the high-speed rail project that ballooned in cost amid repeated delays.
'I don't agree with that," he told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, arguing that because the plant is a "replica" of the Hinkley Point C station, under construction in Somerset, "we can be confident it can be built cheaper and faster".
The plant is expected to be operational some time in the 2030s.
Pressed on how long the project will take, Miliband told the Today programme: 'Around a decade. That's what we believe is likely, mid-2030s is the date that we're putting on this.'
EDF Energy, which owns 16.5% of the project, said in 2023 that in a "best-case scenario", the "earliest that one of the two reactors could be operational would be the end of 2033".
Hereward Phillpot, a lawyer for the company, said the schedule for the project anticipates that both reactors will be operational by mid-2034.
In 2022, the previous Conservative government bought out China General Nuclear Power Group, meaning the state now owns 83.5% of the project, Sky News reported.
Environmental activist and founder of green energy company Ecotricity, Dale Vince, said nuclear projects are "never on time", pointing out that Hinkley Point C was originally meant to be switched-on in 2017 and is now expected to be operational from 2031.
Appearing on ITV's Good Morning Britain on 10 June, Miliband accepted that the completion of the plant will not immediately have an impact on people's energy bills.
"It isn't, but it's about the long-term," he said, suggesting more investment in nuclear will give Britain greater control and security over its energy supplies.
"My position is that we need all of these low-carbon alternatives. At the moment, we're stuck on the fossil fuel rollercoaster," the energy secretary said.
"There's gas markets internationally, which shape the price, controlled by petro-states and dictators. We're doing the short-term things, like solar and wind, and we're doing the long-term things – and it's good for jobs as well."
Sizewell C has said the project could deliver more than £1-1.5 billion of annual savings across the electricity system when it is up and running, but it is hard to tell how this will be passed down to ordinary household bills.
Vince argued that due to funding coming from people's household bills, "billpayers will be forced to subsidise Sizewell for years, no matter how much the costs balloon".
He said keeping the plant safe from an eroding Suffolk coastline "will cost billions more, and every upgrade will land on our energy bills".
Read more
Voices: Could 'going nuclear' finally end Ed Miliband's career? (The Independent)
Rolls-Royce to build Britain's first mini nuclear reactors (The Telegraph)
China banned from investing in Sizewell C, energy secretary Ed Miliband vows (The Independent)