Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will publish the modelling his Department holds on the comparative cost effectiveness, including grid balancing costs, of new large scale nuclear and renewable energy.

The Department publishes information on one useful measure of cost effectiveness for generation technologies in its Electricity Generation Costs series. The latest report (2020) sets out the Levelised Cost Of Electricity (LCOE) for renewables, which can be compared against the LCOE for a generic large-scale nuclear plant published in the 2016 report. The true cost of any future nuclear plant would, however, be dependent on the outcome of negotiations with project developers.

It is important to note that other factors also influence the cost effectiveness of different generation technologies. For example, energy generated at times of high demand and low capacity is more valuable than energy generated at times of low demand and high capacity, and the location of specific generating capacity will further affect costs. The effect of grid balancing on levelised costs is explored more in Section 7 of the 2020 Generation Costs Report.