The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the build cost and financing of a nuclear power station has to include not just the obvious things that we think are associated with a nuclear power station, but all the other infrastructure around that nuclear power station and contributions to decommissioning costs. That is what we are talking about in terms of an overall financing package, and that is why a financing package has to last over the whole life, effectively, of that nuclear power station. I do not intend to move on from the financing of Sizewell C, because that is essentially what this Bill is all about. It is about all those things that the hon. Gentleman mentions, so far as that particular project is concerned.
This plant, if it goes forward—we hope it will go forward with something like this kind of financing—would cover a substantial part of what the Climate Change Committee considers necessary in the mix of low-carbon energy to drive power towards net zero by 2050. I have mentioned that it thinks about 8 GW to 10 GW of new nuclear power would be needed to complement a predominantly renewable power line-up so that firm power considerations are met, without being in such numbers that it puts the development of renewables into jeopardy. That 8 GW to 10 GW includes new nuclear power, but also the one existing power station that will probably last beyond the 2030s in Sizewell B.
Hinkley and Sizewell C together therefore would go a long way towards meeting that assessment by the end of the decade, with two 3.2 GW power stations with reactors in each, and the remaining Sizewell B power station continuing in action. It is not surprising then that we are talking about nuclear financing, which is pretty much all the Bill covers. Exam question: how do we finance an unfinanceable nuclear plant when we know we have got to do it because there is no other option? Even if we did decide to repeat the frankly disastrous device of providing a CfD for the plant at Hinkley, which is likely to produce power at twice market cost, it still would not work, because that does not solve the problem of getting investors into the plant for the lengthy period before production starts. There are ways in which nuclear finance can be sorted out.