page_title: British Energy
section_title: Early history and development
hierarchical_section_title: British Energy / History / Early history and development
caption_attribution_description: View of Dungeness B power Station in kent, UK
context_page_description: British Energy was the UK's largest electricity generation company by volume, before being taken over by Électricité de France in 2009. British Energy operated eight former UK state-owned nuclear power stations and one coal-fired power station.
  From 1 July 2010 the rebranding of British Energy locations and communications to EDF Energy commenced as part of its incorporation into the parent group, following around 17 months of dual branding. This was concluded with the renaming of the operating company from British Energy Generation Limited to EDF Energy Nuclear Generation Limited on 1 July 2011.
context_section_description: British Energy was established and registered in Scotland in 1995 to operate the eight most modern nuclear power plants in the UK. It took the two AGR plants from Scottish Nuclear and five AGR and a sole PWR plant from Nuclear Electric. The residual Magnox power stations from these two companies were transferred to Magnox Electric which later became the generation division of British Nuclear Fuels. The company was privatised in 1996.
  It retained major technical offices at Barnwood, formerly the HQ of Nuclear Electric, and Peel Park, formerly the HQ of Scottish Nuclear.
  In June 1999, in an attempt to become an integrated generating and retail company, British Energy bought the retail electricity and gas supplier SWALEC based in Wales, providing 6% of the England and Wales electricity supply market. However it was unable to purchase another retailer at a reasonable cost to create a widespread retail presence, so sold SWALEC a few months later to Scottish and Southern Energy.
  British Energy bought the 2,000 MWe Eggborough coal fired station from National Power in 2000 to provide a more flexible power production facility and reduce penalty charge risks from the New Electricity Trading Arrangements introduced in March 2001. Despite this, the new arrangements led to a significantly lower electricity price for inflexible base load power stations such as British Energy had. The purchase of Eggborough occurred at the peak of the market for power stations, and in 2002 the value of the station was written down by half.
  In 2001, the company was the major partner in taking on an operating lease to become the operator of Bruce Nuclear Generating Station in Ontario, Canada. The resultant subsidiary was called Bruce Power. As part of financial re-structuring, Bruce Power was sold to a consortium of Canadian investors in February 2003.
  In 2007 British Energy entered into a 7-year partnership agreement with Doosan Babcock Energy to provide technical, engineering and operational support across all British Energy sites.  The agreement was at the time held to be potentially worth around £550 million, bringing up to 800 jobs into Scotland and the rest of the UK.
caption: Dungeness B advanced gas-cooled reactor, in 2005 given a 10-year life extension to 2018.
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