Co-Founder, Eric Ingersoll, at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum: Next steps for the UK nuclear industry - policy, regulation and market development

Westminster EETF

Online Seminar

October 23rd, 2025.

Eric Ingersoll, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at LucidCatalyst, spoke at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum's policy conference, "Next steps for the UK nuclear industry - policy, regulation and market development," giving an address for the seminar: "Nuclear sector development and investment - regulation, financing models and strategic priorities."

After the event, Eric summarized his thoughts below:

The Grid We Already Have: A £200 Billion Question

"Yesterday at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum's Nuclear 25 conference, I had the privilege of addressing a critical but often overlooked aspect of the UK's net zero transition: our existing transmission infrastructure"

The Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight

"The UK has ~30 GW of retired coal and nuclear sites with existing grid connections—transmission infrastructure that took decades to build and is fully permitted. If we convert these sites to high-capacity factor generation (85-90%), they could deliver:

240 TWh annually

100% of the electricity demand increase needed by 2035

75% of the increase required by 2050

...using transmission infrastructure we already have"

The Alternative Path

"Current net zero scenarios require £150-200 billion in new transmission investment, plus £100+ billion for distribution networks. Every megawatt-hour we place on existing infrastructure is one that doesn't require new transmission build-out."

Creating an Efficient Market

"We figured this out for offshore wind. We can apply the same principles to nuclear:

1. Sites - Government proactively licenses and permits former thermal sites for new generation

2. Procurement - Competitive auctions that value system benefits: firm capacity, existing transmission use, reduced storage needs

3. Risk allocation - Government handles site licensing and regulatory certainty; private sector handles technology deployment and operations"

The Core Question

"High-capacity factor baseload generation on existing transmission maximizes the value of assets we've already paid for. We can't create new 400kV transmission routes overnight—planning alone takes 10-15 years.

The grid we already have is a precious, scarce resource. Will we create a market framework that values using it effectively?

Britain became the first G7 nation to phase out coal. Now we have the opportunity to show the world how to phase in zero-carbon replacements—intelligently and efficiently.

The sites are there. The transmission capacity is there. The question is whether we'll be smart enough to use them."

Eric and LucidCatalyst are grateful to the Westminster Energy Forum for the platform, and to the panel colleagues including Alex Minhinick (Burges Salmon), Jasbir Singh Sidhu (Nuclear Capital), Councillor Richard Rout (Suffolk County Council), Johnathan Reynolds (Opergy), and Chris Ashton Holt (EY) for the robust discussion that followed.