New information released today shows that the chief civil servant in charge of the UK Dept of Energy (DECC) held a series of meetings with British nuclear operator EDF to ensure the lights stayed on last year.
The official schedule of diary appointments for Oct-Dec 2014 showed that Stephen Lovegrove, Permanent Secretary at DECC met with EDF three times – as well as with senior management from CGN and the Crown Estate to discuss ‘energy resilience’.
At the time, EDF was suffering extended unexpected repairs which took half its fleet of eight UK nuclear power stations offline.
Publication of these diary dates follows confirmation that ‘capacity margin’ for UK power supply has fallen to just 1.2% (See also: Threat of UK winter power black-outs underlines importance of Longannet for future of Scottish energy security – http://goo.gl/TguZnd
These meetings are published twice-yearly in arrears. The diary appointments data also shows that Lovegrove was lobbied face to face on ‘energy business issues’ last year by GDF Suez, Vattenfall, Dong and EON among others.
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