Another nuclear power station is not the answer to the energy crisis

If the Nuclear Finance Bill currently being debated in the House of Lords sounds too good to be true – that’s because it is, writes Caroline Lucas

The cost of Hinkley Point’s electricity has already risen to nearly £120/MWh even though it is still four years away from delivering any of it to homes and businesses (Getty Images)

One of the oddest responses to the gas crisis has been from a group of Conservative MPs and right-wing columnists campaigning to revive fracking. You do not need to be an energy expert to work out that by the time any investment in fracking – perhaps a decade from now – actually produces any gas, the current crisis would be history.

You’d also expect that those whose claim to govern is based on their understanding of the economy would know that any gas produced in Britain would be sold on global markets at whatever the global price happened to be. This would do nothing to reduce the misery of the millions struggling to pay their bills – though it would be great for the profits of the fossil fuel companies involved.

The economics of gas clearly confuse the Conservative mind, and nuclear power seems to baffle it ever more. How else to explain the government’s decision to buy a 35-year supply of electricity in advance at a fixed price? This is what it did in 2016, as the only way of getting EDF to build a nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point. The cost of that electricity has already risen to nearly £120/MWh even though it is still four years away from delivering any of it to homes and businesses.