Facts about Britain

Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled relative to consumer prices.

With almost identical population sizes, the UK has under 30 million homes, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families.

Per capita electricity generation in the UK is just two thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain versus 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and barely over a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of per capita electricity output than we are to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada.

Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. Its next one, Hinkley Point C, is between four and six times more costly per megawatt of capacity than South Korean nuclear power plants, and four times as expensive as those that South Korea’s KEPCO has agreed to build in Czechia.

Tram projects in Britain are two and a half times more expensive than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 tramways in different cities, including cities with populations of just 150,000, equivalent to Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has still not managed to build a tramway in Leeds, the largest city in Europe without mass transit, with a population of nearly 800,000.

At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times more than each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will be more than eight times more expensive per mile than France’s high speed link between Tours and Bordeaux.

Britain has not built a new reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has grown by 10 million.

Despite huge and rising demand, Heathrow annual flight numbers have been almost completely flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers have risen by 10 million because planes have become larger, but this still compares poorly to the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and the 15 million added at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once per week is worth tens of millions of pounds.

The planning documentation for the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed tunnel under the Thames connecting Kent and Essex, runs to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone has cost £297 million. That is more than twice as much as it cost in Norway to actually build the longest road tunnel in the world.

From Tyler Cowen - Marginal Revolution Blog