Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment his Department has made of the forecast levelised costs for nuclear power generation with a date of commission in (a) 2020, (b) 2025, (c) 2030 and (d) 2035.

DECC’s most recently published figures for current and future levelised costs are available in the DECC Electricity Generation Costs (December 2013) report:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/269888/131217_Electricity_Generation_costs_report_December_2013_Final.pdf

Table 1 below is taken from this report, and shows a range of levelised cost estimates for nuclear projects commissioning in 2020, 2025 and 2030, evaluated using a technology specific hurdle rate of 9.5% (pre-tax real). Estimates are not available for projects commissioning in 2035.

Table 1: Levelised cost estimates for nuclear projects, technology specific hurdle rate, sensitivities around high/low capital costs

Levelised cost estimates for different types of electricity generation are highly sensitive to the assumptions used for capital costs, fuel and EU ETS allowance prices, operating costs, load factor, discount rate and other drivers and this means that there is significant uncertainty around these estimates.