ABSTRACT
Under the privatisation plans at the time of the Electricity Bill, the CEGB was to be divided into two large generating companies – which were referred to as Big G and Little G (which later became National Power and PowerGen, respectively) and a company responsible for transmitting electricity, the National Grid Company. The decision to carve out of the CEGB one company owning about 70 per cent of the total generating capacity in England and Wales, alongside another company with around 30 per cent of the capacity, was driven by the desire to protect the future of nuclear power in England and Wales. Big G was given the larger share of the CEGB’s generating capacity to compensate for the risks and costs of nuclear power. Of the CEGB’s coal, oil, gas turbine and hydro generation capacity, the final allocation gave Big G 30,876MW (or 62.2 per cent of non-nuclear capacity; plus 9,000 MW of nuclear generation). Little G inherited 18,763MW (or 37.8 per cent) of the fossil-fuel and hydro capacity. Nuclear plant in Scotland would be owned jointly by the two vertically-integrated successor companies created out of the two existing electricity boards in that country, in the form of the Scottish Nuclear Company.
