The firm said it had lost out to competition in the B2B sector and that mild weather had hit residential sales. Earnings though were up because of a 7.5TWh increase in nuclear output, which added €314 million compared to 2010, when an unplanned outage took Sizewell B offline for much of the year. EDF said its total UK nuclear output was the highest for six years in 2011.
On extending the working life of its plant, EDF said it is now expecting an average of seven years across all of the Advanced Gas Reactor stations – including Heysham 1 and Hartlepool – and 20 years for Sizewell B.
Across the group, net debt at the end of 2011 stood at €33.3 billion.