Were we ripped off?

The taxpayer built the British power stations and they were owned by nationalised industries. The coal was mined by a nationalised industry, supported by the taxpayer.

Government sold the power stations off to foreign interests.

Did they pay the money back to the taxpayer? Not on your life. The money was needed badly to meet growing Government expenditure. That's why they were sold.

Ripoff!

Why else would a government sell off the assets of the country? How about this one - they were not depreciated and no money was set aside for replacement. As the time came for replacement they were spending money like drunken sailors so none was available to replace even basic infrastructure. So, sell the family silver - obviously.

Ripoff!

What does the taxpayer end up owning? Not a lot.

Fuel
Total MW
UK %
Nuclear
12,097
0.0%
Coal
29,007
10.2%
Gas
28,523
9.8%
Oil
4,323
0.0%
Gasoil
1,311
0.4%
Hydro
4,236
1.7%
Wind
2,043
0.7%
Biomass
179
0.0%

Ripoff!

Coming next: A last word on power generation: Dounreay

Who owns the MegaWatts?

There was a comment on Old Holborn today, perhaps, where a correspondent remarked that Germany “owned” our generating capacity. Sadly, I didn’t make a note of the reference and can’t find it now.

So, does Germany own our generating capacity? Have a look at the table:

The answer is: not exactly.

Ownership	Total MW
UK	18,263
UK/Eire	1,348
/UK/France	32
UK/FRG	16
UK/Japan	550
UK/Spain	6,354
UK/FRG/Bahrain	392
Australia	103
Canada	1512
Canada/India	1,608
Cayman Islands	162
Denmark	9
Eire/USA	96
FRG	20,510
FRG/Eire	401
France	19,259
Norway	168
Sweden	90
USA	1876

Power stations wholly-owned by Germany (FRG) have the biggest output (20,510 MW), followed by those belonging to France (19,259 MW) and then the UK (18,263 MW). However, by splitting hairs, and without any knowledge of the proportional share ownership, if we add in the capacity of jointly-owned UK/foreign capacity, the UK probably has its nose in front.

But is that cause for celebration. Not really. The devil is in the detail. The really big power stations are almost all foreign-owned, nuclear, coal and gas. The smaller ones, and the innovative ones like wind, biomass, are mostly UK-owned. So that’s OK, in 300 years we will be leading he world ….. or maybe not.

Upcoming: who owned what type of power station