There is a growing sense in official Britain that excessive environmental regulations have hogtied investment.
The most notorious example – or the most confected, depending on your point of view – is the £50 million (€56 million) “fish disco” at a nuclear plant in Somerset.
Hinkley Point C is a new nuclear power plant being built on England’s southwest coast. It is being developed by French energy giant EDF at a cost of £46 billion and is due to enter service in 2031, when it will supply about 7 per cent of the UK’s power.
Nuclear plants need huge cooling systems. The Hinkley project’s system will suck in 12 million cubic metres of water a day from the Bristol Channel. Without preventive measures, it would also suck in tonnes of fish. This is where the fish disco comes in.
It has emerged that the developers of Hinkley Point C will spend up to £700 million on measures to keep fish away, following stipulations from environmental regulators.
British media often breathlessly quote this figure as the cost of the fish disco, an acoustic system to deter marine life from entering the cooling plant’s water intake pipe. Most of the cost, however, will be spent on other fishy measures. The disco is just one.
What sort of a disco do you get for £50 million? The system involves attaching 300 loudspeakers around the water intake pipe, with others nearby. These broadcast noises at various frequencies to make fish flee. Different species react to different sounds.
Hinkley Point C was considered for years before the last Tory government gave it the green light. Former Tory cabinet member and now Spectator editor Michael Gove coined the “fish disco” moniker in exasperation at the project’s cost and complexity.
It has been back in the news over the past week after Laois-born former competition regulator John Fingleton submitted a report to the UK’s Labour government on developing the nuclear industry. The UK government has promised a new “golden age” of nuclear investment, but Fingleton’s report said it was, in fact, just “gold plated”.
“[Britain] is now the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear projects,” Fingleton wrote. He found that over-exuberant mitigation of the unlikeliest of risks, usually at the behest of regulators, was one of the big causes of galloping expense.
Fingleton reported that Hinkley’s fish disco and other costly measures would save fewer than one wild salmon a year, six river lampreys, 18 allis shad and 528 twaite shads.
He issued 47 recommendations to cut the cost of nuclear development, some of which addressed environmental and habitat regulations. Prime minister Keir Starmer was so impressed with Fingleton’s report, he asked his business secretary, Peter Kyle, to apply its recommendations across the UK’s entire industrial strategy.
Fingleton cited further examples in the wider arena of infrastructural development where allegedly zealous regulators had lumbered projects with huge costs. He mentioned a £100 million “bat tunnel” in Buckinghamshire as part of the development of a high-speed rail line, to protect about 300 Bechstein bats. He underlined that the authorities had basically valued each bat at more than £300,000.
He highlighted how authorities had designated a swathe of coastline in Cornwall a special protection area (SPA) because about 15 Slavonian Grebes, a type of waterbird, spend winters there. The SPA designation means every big project must buy a costly habitat report, even thought the chances of encountering one of the birds is “infinitesimal”.
Fingleton said an offshore wind energy project at Dogger Bank, off east Yorkshire, was forced to spend £173 million on “bird hotels” and other measures to stop them being killed. Another project off Norfolk was delayed over reefs that may or may not exist.
Fingleton has proposed that instead of being restrained by habitat directives, the developers of big nuclear projects could just pay into a wildlife fund and then build away – within reason. He suggested a fee of £1 million per acre of the project’s footprint.
Wildlife and environmental activists, meanwhile, say the concerns over fish discos and bat tunnels are reckless and overplayed by politicians and journalists. They say the regulations are essential to protect vulnerable species and habitats.
The next flashpoint may come at another nuclear project. Starmer’s government has pledged to build a series of mini nuclear reactors supplied by Rolls-Royce at various locations. The first three are meant to be at Wylfa in north Wales. But environmentalists there have already raised concerns about the impact on Arctic terns that nest nearby.
Meanwhile, Starmer, who is hungry for investment to kick-start Britain’s flaccid economy, argues that many regulations are “well-intentioned but fundamentally misguided”. He cited a quote from Fingleton who said the system of regulation around development includes “a mindset that favours process over outcome”.
No more bat tunnels or fish discos for Starmer. He wants Britain to play a different tune.
