All posts by Alison Downes

Levelling Up

Updated Development Economics Report reveals almost all nuclear sites have higher “levelling up” potential than East Suffolk

12 November 2021. An independent report by Development Economics [1] shows that five out of the government’s seven remaining potential sites for new nuclear power projects would be likely to benefit more in “levelling up” terms than East Suffolk, where EDF is proposing to build Sizewell C. 

The New Nuclear Location Benchmarking report – updated for the second time in November 2021 – was commissioned by Stop Sizewell C in order to better understand EDF’s claim that the construction of Sizewell C is key to Suffolk’s economic recovery. The ability of a large infrastructure project to contribute positively to the area that hosts it depends on a number of variables, such as:

  • the ability to provide a local workforce without the need for extended commuting from other population centres;
  • the size and structure of the local business base; and
  • the presence of industries that could be either positively or adversely affected by the construction and/or operation of the proposed infrastructure project.

In 2020, Development Economics independently selected 12 indicators of socio-economic performance, including demographic characteristics and change, availability of jobs, labour market activity, workforce characteristics, structure of the employment base, earnings, annual contributions to wealth generation and levels of new business formation, and assessed data for eight local authorities. Updating the report in November 2021, aggregating the results produced a ranking in which the Hartlepool site demonstrated the greatest potential for ‘levelling up”, followed by Moorside, [2] Wylfa, Heysham and Bradwell with only Oldbury in Gloucestershire below Sizewell. Hinkley Point, which is already under development, was in 7th place.

Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said: “Whilst we have fundamental and legitimate questions about whether Sizewell C is in fact needed, we wanted to see how East Suffolk compares with other sites in terms of addressing the government’s “levelling up” agenda, and the answer is clear: East Suffolk is just off the bottom of the list of available sites. If government is determined to pursue further nuclear mega-projects, it should abandon the current developer-led approach – which is totally unstrategic and has left us with the only active projects being by overseas state-backed developers [3] using expensive, unproven technology [4] on environmentally unsuitable [5] sites – in favour of a pro-active levelling up approach.”

“We contend that the economic benefits for Suffolk will be limited by EDF’s intended use of the Hinkley supply chain, Suffolk’s low unemployment and lower level of appropriate skills. EDF’s expectation that almost 6,000 Sizewell C workers will require local accommodation and still more are assumed to travel 90 minutes each way [6] proves that local people won’t take the majority of jobs available, and certainly not the higher-skilled roles. Indeed, according to EDF’s Sizewell C application documents, only 7-8% of jobs in the Professional and Management sector [7] would go to people within the 90-minute commuter zone. Meanwhile, displacement of workers from existing businesses, traffic congestion and the huge scale of the construction will damage Suffolk’s resilient SME-based local economy, especially in tourism at a time when there is huge potential for that to grow.”

Notes

  1. https://developmenteconomics.co.uk/
  2. EDF has declared an interest in the Moorside site in Cumbria https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/sizewell-c/news-views/edf-joins-major-companies-unions-to-promote-moorside-clean-energy-hub
  3. Only French utility EDF and its partner China General Nuclear (CGN)  have a project in active development, at Sizewell C. CGN’s Bradwell project is “paused” and Horizon’s Wylfa project cancelled. 
  4. Taishan I in China is offline due to fuel failure after only three years of commercial operation, and the ONR is mindful of the implications for Hinkley C and Sizewell C. Taishans I & II are the only completed EPRs anywhere in the world. Malfunctioning safety valves at the decade-late EPR new build in Olkiluoto, Finland could also have implications. The Flamanville EPR build is  a decade late and Hinkley Point C is overspent and at risk of delays. 
  5. The SZC site is recognised in the National Policy Statement as having significant environmental sensitivity, similar to Bradwell.
  6. See Stop Sizewell C’s critique of EDF’s Economic Statement. https://stopsizewellc.org/economic-impacts/
  7. Ibid. At peak, EDF expects only 150 (7%) of 1,740 jobs in Professional & Management to be filled by “home-based” workers, ie living within a 90-minute commute of Sizewell C.

Report Summary:

The full report is online here

Summary

Development Economics Ltd has carried out a number of assessments since June 2020 of the comparative economic performance of eight locations that have been selected by the UK Government in October 2010 as being potentially suitable for the development of new nuclear power stations.

12 wide-ranging indicators of socio-economic performance of candidate host areas were selected based on Office for National Statistics (ONS) data sets. These indicators covered aspects such as demographic characteristics and change, availability of jobs, labour market activity, workforce characteristics, structure of the employment base, earnings, annual contributions to wealth generation and levels of new business formation.

The specific criteria originally selected were as follows:

  • Proportion of the population of working age

  • Average annual rate of job growth

  • Trend in working age population

  • Business start-up rate per capita

  • Employment rate

  • Proportion of employment in Construction

  • Spare capacity in local labour force

  • Proportion of employment in the Hospitality sector

  • Proportion of workforce in relevant occupations

  • Full time earnings of residents

  • Job density

  • Gross Value Added per capita

These criteria are widely used, regularly updated, and are readily available for GB local authority areas from the ONS. An overall assessment of rankings by location was then obtained by aggregating the ranking for each individual indicator and generating an overall average score across all indicators.

In two subsequent updates, the GVA per capita data series for individual local authorities was – which ONS was no longer updating – was replaced by a dataset of the average value of GVA per filled job located in each local authority area.  This replacement indicator had the advantage of better reflecting the average productivity of the deployed workforce in each local authority area, plus it also had the advantage of being available for a more recent year (2018).

The latest update of the assessment was conducted by Development Economics in November 2021. Revised data was available for all 12 indicators compared to June 2020; Hartlepool is found to be the most advantageous location from a ‘levelling up’ perspective, with Oldbury (South Gloucestershire) as the least favourable location.

Overall rankings: November 2021

Site

Local authority area

Average score

Ranking

Hartlepool

Hartlepool

3.25

1

Moorside

Copeland

3.42

2

Wylfa

Anglesey

3.92

3

Heysham

Lancaster

4.17

4

Bradwell

Maldon

4.67

5

Sizewell

East Suffolk

4.92

6

Hinkley Point

Somerset W & Taunton

5.67

7

Oldbury

South Gloucestershire

5.83

8

Anthony Horowitz: Building Sizewell C would be a nuclear-sized disaster

The Spectator, 19 December 2020

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/building-sizewell-c-would-be-a-nuclear-sized-disaster

I love Suffolk. This Christmas I will be there with my family and we’ll almost certainly walk up the coast, joining dog-walkers, bird-watchers, hikers and even swimmers in one of the most beautiful and unspoiled parts of the UK. The secret of Suffolk is its relative inaccessibility. No major motorway connects it and once you arrive you’re committed to a sprawling network of country lanes that twist through heathland and grazing marsh, mudflats and reedbeds. Minsmere, a nature reserve that’s home to 6,000 wildlife species, is among its glories. The nightjar, the woodlark, the Dartford warbler and the silver-studded butterfly are just some of the rare species found there.

At least for the time being.

Not just the heritage coast, but quite possibly the entire county, could be changed for ever by the arrival of two new European pressurised reactors (EPRs). ‘Sizewell C, a proposed new nuclear power station in Suffolk, has the potential to generate the reliable low carbon electricity the country needs for decades to come’ is the claim made by EDF Energy, the French-owned company behind the project. It also has the potential to be a disastrous and expensive mistake. Many believe it already is.

First there’s the site, which, if this were an episode of Yes Minister, might have been chosen for its comedy potential. Next to a world-famous bird sanctuary? In an area well-known for serious coastal erosion? As the avocets and warblers take flight, the entire thing could be reclaimed by a vengeful sea. The site is too small. It’s poorly connected. (EDF put forward the idea of an 800m jetty to allow access by water. The idea sank.) Imagine 1,000 HGVs arriving every day, 10,000 cars, hundreds of buses. Actually, if you know the area, you can’t.

As for EDF, perhaps you should judge a company by the company it keeps. EDF is in bed with CGN or China General Nuclear — blacklisted by the US government after the FBI and Department of Justice uncovered a nasty propensity for stealing American technology for its own use.

EDF may have lots of things going for it, but money isn’t one of them. Already stretched to the limit by its 66 per cent stake in Hinkley Point (with a budget that has risen from £16 billion to at least £ 21.5 billion, making it the most expensive power station in the world), it needs £20 billion and hopes the UK government will come up with most of that through either a large stakeholding or a tax added to energy bills known as Regulated Asset Base.

To be fair, EPR nuclear reactors are notoriously difficult and expensive to construct. Look at Olkiluoto Island to the west of Finland, which went wrong almost at once when the slab base was incorrectly laid, a design fault which could have caused the entire thing to collapse if anyone sneezed. The project has been swamped by lawsuits. Or Flamanville in France, where costs have risen from €3.3 billion to €12.4billion and the EPR is already eight years late. The French energy minister has described it as a ‘mess’.

Here are two simple truths.

Right now the main beneficiary of the nuclear industry is… the nuclear industry. No western European country has commissioned new builds apart from the fiascos in Finland and France. Why is EDF even suggesting an EPR when there are other options that could be considered? There are the small modular reactors, for example, proposed by Rolls-Royce and put together in factories off-site, each one producing 440 megawatts of electricity, enough to power a small city. But that’s not what EDF does. It’ll stick with what it knows, even if what it knows is cumbersome and expensive.

And slow. Sizewell C needs planning consent and operating licences that won’t be in place before 2022. It will take 12 years to construct. The earliest it could power even a single Christmas tree light is 2034, and it will need another six years to offset the CO2 created by its construction. Net zero is of course the ultimate goal. But there are other ways to achieve this. Suffolk has offshore wind farms with more planned. Hydropower, geothermal energy, hydrogen cell technology — there’s every chance that by the time Sizewell C opens it will already be outdated.

But will it actually go ahead? Nobody knows. The Prime Minister has approved the start of negotiations with EDF and he does like his ‘big’ projects, but in this case that’s exactly the problem. As Alison Downes, a human rights campaigner now leading the Stop Sizewell C protest group, told me: ‘We have no ideological opposition to nuclear power. It’s the sheer scale and intensity of what’s required to build these huge reactors — the workforce and the materials and all the rest of it — that have angered local people.’ A petition against the project has been signed by 19,000 of them.

They may well know what to expect. Look at Leiston, just a few miles away, which bought into the myth of Sizewell B. Huge social problems involving pop-up brothels and drug dealing arose during its construction (1987-95) and what has been left behind is hardly glorious. The town looks tired and a little sad. Anthony Douglas CBE, chair of the Suffolk Safeguarding Partnership which protects children and adults at risk in the county, describes ‘a significantly deprived population… with little social mobility’. This is the legacy of Sizewell B, and he worries that years of disruption during the new construction will further impact the health and wellbeing of local people.

Call me a Nimby if you must. How cleverly Donated (the Department Of Nasty Acronyms To Eliminate Debate) attacks our quality of life with easy insults. Not in my backyard — yes, but how else are we to protect the world if we don’t look out for our backyards, for our neighbours, for each other? By the time Sizewell C is actually producing electricity I could well be dead, so in fact it’s your and my children’s backyards that concern me.

And on that cheery note, COTS! Work it out.

EADT 14 December 2020

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/government-could-invest-in-sizewell-6746048

Government signals support for Sizewell C by seeking stake in project

Proposals to build a new nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast at Sizewell have taken a significant step forward as the government confirmed it is seeking to invest in the project.

It has said it will start talks with EDF Energy over investing in the power station – although a final decision on whether it can go ahead is still some way away, and subject to planning approval.

The government statement said the negotiations were part of its “options to enable investment in at least one nuclear power station by the end of this Parliament”

The energy giant is currently applying for planning permission for the 3.2-gigawatt plant, which could create thousands of new jobs during construction and operation if given the go-ahead.

However the proposal has prompted widespread local concern because of proposals to use large areas of environmentally-sensitive land which is part of the eco-system with the Minsmere Nature Reserve at its heart.

The government has also warned that it will have to be convinced about the economic benefits of the project.

In a statement, which also set out its Energy White Paper, the Government said: “This is the next step in considering the Sizewell C project, and negotiations will be subject to reaching a value-for-money deal and all other relevant approvals, before any final decision is taken on whether to proceed.

“The successful conclusion of these negotiations will be subject to thorough scrutiny and needs to satisfy the Government’s robust legal, regulatory and national security requirements.”

Humphrey Cadoux-Hudson, EDF Energy’s Managing Director, Nuclear Development: “The Government’s decision to enter negotiations on Sizewell C is great news and further recognition of the vital role large scale nuclear will play in getting to net zero.

“The go-ahead for Sizewell C would bring the Green Industrial Revolution to life, creating thousands of British jobs and apprenticeships, and delivering a huge boost for thousands of nuclear supply chain companies up and down the country. It will be a project Britain can be proud of.

“We are eager to start discussions with the Government on a suitable financing model for the project and we look forward to the next phase of scrutiny of our plans by the Planning Inspectorate.

“Sizewell C will build on the great progress being made at Hinkley Point C and, as a copy, will benefit from lower construction and financing costs. We are confident that we can arrive at a funding solution which will provide value for money and help to lower energy bills for consumers.”

The proposals have already sparked widespread concern among local politicians with MPs Dr Therese Coffey and Dr Dan Poulter and both Suffolk County Council and East Suffolk Council saying they have major worries about the plans for the station – even though they are not opposed in principal to the aims of the project.

Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C

Alison Downes from the Stop Sizewell C campaign. – Credit: Sarah Lucy Brown

Alison Downes from the Stop Sizewell C Campaign did not feel today’s announcement was particularly significant: “We have known the government is in talks about this, but this does not take things forward.

“They are talking about whether they should take a small stake in the project – but there is still a very long way to go before any final permission is given. From that point of view I don’t think this changes things at all.”

Terry Baxter from Inspire Suffolk believes Sizewell C would be good for the county. – Credit: SIZEWELL C/NICOLE DRURY

But Terry Baxter, chief executive of Inspire Suffolk and a keen backer of the project, felt it was very significant: “This is the largest infrastructure project proposed for East Anglia and the government wants to show its support by investing in it.

“That will be very good for jobs in the area – giving real hope to people and families who need good, well-paid, work right here in Suffolk.”