The complaint names the cap on liabilities for nuclear accidents as a subsidy for nuclear power, suggesting that if the full cost of insuring against a nuclear disaster were included the price of nuclear electricity would rise by at least 14 Euro cents per KWh and perhaps as much as €2.36.
Other subsidies in the complaint are: that uranium is exempted from a tax on fuels used to generate electricity, and that the UK government is proposing to provide support for the disposal of nuclear waste and a subsidy in the form of a feed-in tariff.
Dr Dörte Fouquet, the lawyer who has been leading the preparation of the complaint, and is director of the European Renewable Energies Federation, said: “The European Union has opted for opening up the energy market and is vigilant about creating a level playing field. In this regard, the Commission over the last years repeatedly underlined that distortion of the market is to a large extent caused by subsidies to the incumbents in the energy sector. This complaint aims to shed some light on the recent shift in the energy policy of the United Kingdom where strong signals point to yet another set of subsidies to the nuclear power plant operators.”
The “grounds of complaint” are:
That the so-called “carbon price floor”, introduced in the Finance Act 2011, is a de facto tax on fuels used for the generation of electricity and that the exemption of uranium from that tax is incompatible with EU state aid rules.
That the cap on liabilities for nuclear accidents of the Paris/Brussels Conventions constitutes state aid.
That the proposed cap on liabilities of nuclear operators for the disposal of nuclear waste falls under the definition of state aid.
That the proposed “feed-in tariff with contracts for difference”, as applied to nuclear power, is, under Article 34 of the TFEU, a measure having an effect that is equivalent to “quantitative restrictions on imports” and is thus contrary to EU law.
Energy fair argues that in terms of the fight against climate change, nuclear power diverts attention, effort, and large amounts of money away from renewables and the conservation of energy, where those resources would be better spent.