§ Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smithasked the Secretary of State for Energy what estimates he has made of the relative costs of electricity generated by coal and advanced gas reactor nuclear power stations.
§ Mr. Norman LamontIn January 1978 the Department published as Energy Commission Paper No. 6 an evaluation of comparative coal and nuclear (including AGR) power station costs at January 1977 prices. A copy is available in the Library of the House. These studies are kept under review.
The Central Electricity Generating Board has published information in its annual report for 1979–80 on the relative historic costs in that year of electricity generated by an AGR station (Hinkley Point B) and a comparable coal-fired station (Drax first half); the board has also published calculations in its annual report of the net effective cost of future nuclear and coal-fired stations, at March 1980 price levels, which are used to assess investment decisions.
392WThe average United Kingdom industrial gas price in September/October 1980, was about 20p/therm, or 23½p excluding the old, low-price contracts. Reliable comparative data on the Continent is harder to obtain, but given that contract renewal and average prices are closer there than in the United Kingdom, estimates from an independent source for average renewal prices in September 1980, of 27.8p per therm in Germany and 24.2p per therm in France may not be misleading.
It must always be borne in mind when making international price comparisons that difficulties can arise in times of changing prices and exchange rate fluctuations. There can, moreover, be a wide range of prices within countries and differences in the methods of collating data in each country may not always provide comparable figures.