Saturday 1 February 2014

Saved by the European Commission ? Looks Like It !

A few weeks ago we opined that it may be necessary to look to the EC for our salvation in the matter of the government's enthusiasm for lining EDF's palm with gold for 35 years via its intended exorbitantly-priced electricity contract for the planned Hinkley C nuclear power station.

And lo!  the EC has laboured - extremely quickly (although only released on Friday it's dated mid December) - and brought forth a devastating 70-page masterpiece, damning the dirty deed as illicit state aid.  Only a preliminary opinion mind - but what an opinion !  Too late to offer a summary now, so more next week.

After the years of reading the desperate, mindless pulp and sophistry issuing from DECC and its predecessors every since Miliband's 2008 Energy Act, it is a true pleasure to read such cogent reasoning and plain-speaking.  Here - have a read yourself

And a good weekend !  This has started mine brilliantly:   the radioactive turd that is EDF ushered closer to the WC.  And there's another French team to be roughed up this afternoon  ...  Swing Lo !

ND

6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

For the time being...

rwendland said...

From a quick read, the report does read like a tour de force. Earlier I had thought brutal arm-twisting would get this through the EC, but I'm much less sure of that now. There are just so many competition policy issues, its hard to see how they can all be manoeuvred around.

It seems like EDF needs an EC Nuclear Energy Directive agreed, that provides ways of overriding competition policy, just like the Renewables Directive does. But getting that agreed across the EU in a moderate hurry seems an impossible objective.

Hmmm. Very interesting to see what happens here.

I copied a load of intersting quotes of the report, but too many to give here.

Maybe just one: amazingly the UK Government finance guarantee is callable ahead of equity partner losses if things go badly pear-shaped, rather than just before the bondholders. That just seems plain wrong, and shows how pathetically the govt has negotiated this.

James Higham said...

the desperate, mindless pulp and sophistry issuing from DECC and its predecessors

Strikes a chord.

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