Investment for Hinkley ‘could be better placed elsewhere’

  The money invested to support the construction of Hinkley could have been used for other new clean technologies or energy efficiency. That’s the view of some of the energy experts […]

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The money invested to support the construction of Hinkley could have been used for other new clean technologies or energy efficiency.

That’s the view of some of the energy experts who were at our Power Ride charity event last week, through which we raised more than £1,200 to support Parkinson’s and our Re-energise Nepal campaign

Earlier this month the government gave the final go-ahead for EDF’s £18 billion project in Somerset.

The Tory Administration has pledged £2 billion in the first nuclear plant in a generation.

Industry Expert Georgina Penfold said: “I would prefer it if the money that’s going into Hinkley went into energy efficiency. I think if more investment was put into efficiency we wouldn’t have the supply gap that we’ve got and then we wouldn’t need to knee-jerk reaction into very big, expensive projects like Hinkley.

“That said we do need baseload power and there isn’t any other possibility on the table right now so it was a tough call but personally it should have gone into more efficient measures.”

Chris Kimmell, Commercial Manager at Open Energi believes Hinkley is “very old school”.

He added: “For the same amount of money, you could invest all on demand side management whether that’s efficiency or managing demand in a better way and managing a system with smaller margins rather than trying to sort of produce huge amounts of power from one plant that you then become very, very reliant on. For us it’s a good thing that investment is going into energy but we think investment could be better placed in demand side.”

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