Darkness looms as distracted ministers fail to address the widening energy gap

Transfixed as you were by Westminster chaos, did you also spot the news that Hitachi is about to cancel or suspend construction of the Wylfa nuclear power station in North Wales? The Japanese engineering giant has evidently failed to reach agreement on a guaranteed electricity price and terms for a UK government stake in the project; its decision follows that of its compatriot Toshiba, which in November pulled out of building a nuclear station at Moorside in Cumbria, largely because it disliked the Treasury’s favoured financing model that loads risk on to the contractor.

These two projects between them were intended to keep the lights on in 11 million UK homes, factories and offices.Theresa May’s talks last week with Shinzo Abe, her visiting opposite number from Tokyo, were too consumed by the threat of no deal to cover the question of whether future London trade talks with Japan will have to take place in the dark.

Business Secretary Greg Clark also last year rejected (against independent advice) the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, which if replicated at other coastal sites might have provided another useful percentage of national power. So the gap created by continuing closures of carbon-fuelled and old nuclear stations — a long-time theme of this column — looms wider than ever. The only alternative anyone talks about is unreliable offshore wind, and the only major onshore project still claiming to be on track is the most controversial of all: the Hinkley Point nuclear station, being built by the French company EDF with Chinese partners, and using a reactor design that has encountered serious problems elsewhere.