The Telegraph reports that Hinkley Point C will slap £1bn a year onto UK energy bills the moment it starts generating.
The cash will flow straight from households to EDF under a subsidy deal locked in more than a decade ago.
A second £1bn hit will land through the nuclear levy that bankrolls Sizewell C in Suffolk.
Campaigners are already calling the combination a “nuclear tax on households” as ministers push ahead with the biggest expansion of nuclear power in a generation.
Treasury and OBR documents released after Rachel Reeves’s Budget spell out how the money will move.
CfD receipts are forecast to hit £4.6bn in 2030-31 with £1bn of that handed to Hinkley C in its first year of operation.
The root cause is the 2013 strike price agreed between EDF and Sir Ed Davey.
It guarantees £92.50/MWh for Hinkley’s output, now worth £133 with inflation and expected to reach around £150 by the time the plant opens in 2030.
If wholesale prices hover near £80/MWh as they do today EDF can claim roughly £70/MWh from consumers and businesses to make up the difference.
That explains the £1bn annual uplift.
From January the Sizewell C Regulated Asset Base levy also kicks in. It adds £10 to bills from 2026 raising £700m then doubles by 2030 when it will bring in £1.4bn a year.
Official modelling suggests Sizewell C could cost as much as £100bn by the time it is finished.
More rises could follow once ministers approve a new nuclear site on Anglesey which is earmarked for the UK’s first small modular reactors.
Critics say the numbers prove nuclear is among the most expensive forms of generation.
Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said costs for construction and waste will keep climbing which is why the group opposes “a nuclear tax on households”.
Environmental and system levies already add £14bn to bills and are set to rise to £19bn by 2030.
The government says the support is essential to deliver its “golden age of nuclear” and argues Hinkley and Sizewell will provide clean power for six million homes each for sixty years.
ELN has asked EDF for a response.
Did Davey’s EDF Hinkley deal scupper tax payer? appeared first on Energy Live News.