Weekend press round-up: New Sizewell plant looks set for green light

In our latest round-up of sector coverage from the national press, the government looks close to giving the green light to a new nuclear plant at Sizewell in Suffolk; RWE warns that Britain’s bid to power every home with offshore windfarms by 2030 is at risk of being derailed; Cadent is fined over “sloppy” safety measures; and the founder of Ovo Energy has spun out a new start-up.

New nuclear plant at Sizewell set for green light

The government is close to giving the green light to a new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk.

The BBC has learned that talks with the Sizewell contractor, EDF, have intensified in recent weeks.

This comes after the collapse of projects in Anglesey and Cumbria when Japanese firms Hitachi and Toshiba pulled out.

Government officials are insisting that it “remains committed to new nuclear”.

This commitment to new nuclear may be included as part of a 10-point government plan to be published in early November.

That plan is expected ahead of a detailed government white paper in late November which will attempt to set out the course of UK energy policy for decades to come.

Unions have warned that a failure to transfer jobs, skills and new opportunities from the current project under construction at Hinkley Point in Somerset to Sizewell in Suffolk would put thousands of high skilled jobs at risk.

The details of how new reactors at Sizewell will be paid for are still being hammered out.

The government is considering taking an ownership stake and consumers may see a small addition to their bills to pay for the project as it is being built, in order to drive down the costs of financing a project that may cost up to £20 billion and take about 10 years to build.

The bigger the government stake, the smaller the call on consumers to “pay as you go” for the development and construction costs.

This funding model has been treated with suspicion before, as opponents say it transfers the risk of delays and budget overruns from the contractor to the consumer and the taxpayer.

However, the BBC understands that the fact Sizewell C is a carbon copy of Hinkley – which has seen work on a second reactor there completed 30 per cent more quickly than the first – is thought to have substantially mitigated that risk.

One of the reasons that the electricity that Hinkley will one day produce is so expensive (£92.50 per megawatt hour, compared with gas and wind at about £40) is that the constructors were required to shoulder the risk of any cost overruns themselves. EDF estimates that the cost of electricity produced at Sizewell will be somewhere between £40 and £60.

The government hopes that the regular payments from both the government and consumers will encourage private sector investors like pension funds to also take an ownership stake in the project.

Read the full story from the BBC

UK’s bid to power every home via offshore windfarms by 2030 at risk

Britain’s bid to build enough offshore windfarms to power every home in the country by 2030 risks being derailed by outdated regulation which is slowing investment in the electricity grid, according to one of the industry’s biggest players.

Germany’s RWE has warned that work to connect the growing number of windfarms off the UK coast to the onshore electricity grid will not keep pace with the government’s goals unless decades-old regulation allows for faster investments.

“The one thing that is delaying our projects is the onshore connections,” said Tom Glover, RWE’s UK boss. “It’s getting quite serious. We are getting to the point of concern over whether that 40GW target can be met purely because of the onshore grid. It is only the onshore grid which could stop this happening.”

RWE is one of the world’s largest renewable energy developers and plans to spend just under one-third of its investment budget in the UK. However, many of its projects have been delayed because the company has not been able to secure a grid connection for their projects in time to compete in the government’s contract auction rounds.

“We would like to see some anticipatory investment in the onshore network so that we can get the offshore connected in time,” Glover said.

The cost of energy grid investments is ultimately paid through energy bills, which means they are carefully considered by the industry regulator, Ofgem, to avoid saddling households with the cost of projects which aren’t necessary.

“Ten years ago it was completely understandable that the energy system operator and Ofgem didn’t want to support these anticipatory investments because you could waste a lot of money preparing the grid for projects which didn’t come on line,” Glover said.

“That regime and thinking was suitable for the industry at that time. But today we know that offshore wind is coming, we have a clear government target for 40GW, and we know that it will connect into the north-west, the north-east and the south-east of the energy grid,” he added.

The warning from a major energy generator follows similar criticism from energy network companies, including Scottish Power and National Grid, which have argued that the regulator should allow more investment or risk putting the UK’s net zero climate targets in doubt.

A spokesman for the regulator said its new regulatory framework “aims to secure billions of pounds of new investment in the grid to enable the UK to hit net zero and help drive the green recovery”.

“We are working with the government and the industry to develop proposals for a coordinated programme of anticipatory investments in the onshore and offshore networks to enable 40GW of offshore windfarms in the North Sea. All this must be delivered at the lowest cost to consumers, so we are challenging the industry to be much more efficient in how it runs and finances itself,” the spokesman added.

The Guardian

Cadent Gas fined thousands for ‘sloppy’ safety measures

Richmond Council has won a legal case against Cadent Gas following a series of safety breaches.

Cadent Gas Ltd was fined over £37k this week for a number of breaches in safety and operating without a valid street works permit.

The company pleaded guilty at Lavender Hill Magistrates Court on 15 October to two offences.

One offence was for commencing work on the public highway without a valid permit in place.

The second offence was working unsafely on a public highway in breach of Section 65 of the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991.

A sentencing hearing took place at Wimbledon Magistrates Court on 26 October.

Following an investigation by Richmond Council, council officers found that the contractors, who were working on behalf of Cadent Gas, set up a work site with no signage, lighting or guarding, there were also no provisions for pedestrians, particularly those with disabilities.

The Court ruled that whilst Cadent Gas wasn’t the company delivering the work they have a responsibility to manage their contractors and sentenced them to pay £37,139.75 in fines and costs.

Richmond and Twickenham Times 

OVO Energy founder spins out productivity start-up

The founder of OVO Energy has launched a new start-up that aims to force employees to prioritise their workloads.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, who previously owned F1 team Manor Racing, co-founded Just3Things after using the system to save his own energy business “millions of pounds a year”.

Mr Fitzpatrick created the company with Kim Atherton, who was previously the chief people officer at OVO.

The pair believe the app, which has been privately funded to date, is well placed to take advantage of the surge in people working remotely. Just3Things was first spun out in 2018 but will look to raise funds for the first time by March of next year.

The app, which already has clients like Deloitte and PayPoint, acts as a central hub where employers can outline their key goals and vision of the company. Workers can also update the hub with the three top things that they’re working on, giving managers a top-down view of their staff.

The company claimed it heavily reduces the amount of time wasted repeatedly updating colleagues with the same news. By putting the update into the system it means everyone inside a company can see that it has been done.

“As an organisation, OVO started out as a very small company of about 10 people with everyone understanding or knowing what everyone in the business was doing,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.

“But after growing to 10,000 employees it was impossible to know what everyone was working on. Time and time again we found that it wasn’t clear to everyone what the important priorities were.”

He also claimed Just3Things was able to save OVO Energy £3m a year in improved productivity and an increased ability to avoid duplication of work.

Ms Atherton said the increase in remote working, spurred by the pandemic, has also led to a spike in interest for the product.

“It certainly made us more relevant,” she said.

“Some of the businesses we’re talking to put together task forces that look at how to improve remote working. A lot of companies have these huge barriers to entry, like procurement processes, but a lot of them are really streamlining that.”

The Telegraph

Utility Week’s weekend press round-up is a curation of articles in the national newspapers relating to the energy and water sector. The views expressed are not those of Utility Week or Faversham House.