LONDON: British plans to build two new nuclear reactors has drawn the ire of renewable-energy supporters. Now, the government in Vienna has filed a lawsuit, arguing that the project violates EU law.
The fight over the EU’s energy future heated up on Monday, after Austria took legal action against the bloc’s executive over a decision to sign off on EU subsidies for Britain’s first nuclear power project in decades.
The Alpine nation, a clean-energy apostle since the 1970s, said it had filed a lawsuit at the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg, arguing that the European Commission violated the EU’s commitment to supporting renewables.
“Subsidies are there to support modern technologies that lie in the general interest of all EU member states. This is not the case with nuclear power,” Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann said in a statement on Monday.
“Nuclear power plants are dangerous, expensive and – compared with…wind, hydro and solar energy – neither economically nor ecologically competitive,” he added.
Nuclear lightning rod
But it is not just Brussels’ support of Britain’s choice of energy source that has invited controversy. Opponents are also lashing out at the Commissioners’ decision to back such a project, the price tag of which is already threatening to explode: Whereas the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station was initially billed at 16 billion British pounds (22.6 billion euros, $25 billion dollars), EU officials now estimate the total will be closer to 25 billion British pounds.
