Facts about Britain – The Marginal REVOLUTION

  • Between 2004 and 2021, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the industrial price of energy tripled in nominal terms, or doubled compared to consumer prices.
  • With roughly the same population, the UK has just under 30 million households, while France has around 37 million. 800,000 British families have second homes compared to 3.4 million French families.
  • Electricity production per capita in the UK is two-thirds of what it is in France (4,800 kilowatt-hours per year in Britain compared to 7,300 kilowatt-hours per year in France) and almost a third of what it is in the United States (12,672 kilowatt-hours hours per year). We are closer to developing countries like Brazil and South Africa in terms of electricity output per capita than to Germany, China, Japan, Sweden, or Canada.
  • Britain’s last nuclear power plant was built between 1987 and 1995. The next, Hinkley Point C, is four to six times more expensive per megawatt capacity than South Korea, and four times more expensive than South Korea’s KEPCO. agreed to build in Czechia.
  • Tram projects in Britain cost two and a half times more than French projects on a per mile basis. In the last 25 years, France has built 21 railway lines in different cities, including cities with just 150,000 people, the equivalent of Lincoln or Carlisle. The UK has yet to build a tram in Leeds, Europe’s largest city without mass transit, with a population of around 800,000.
  • At £396 million, each mile of HS2 will cost more than four times as much as each mile of the Naples to Bari high speed line. It will cost more than eight times more per mile than the French high-speed link between Tours and Bordeaux.
  • Britain has not built a reservoir since 1992. Since then, Britain’s population has increased by ten million.
  • Despite high and rising demand, Heathrow’s annual flight numbers have been almost flat since 2000. Annual passenger numbers are up by 10 million because the planes are bigger, but this still compares poorly with the 22 million added at Amsterdam’s Schiphol and 15 million more. Charles de Gaulle’s Paris. The right to take off and land at Heathrow once a week costs tens of millions of pounds.
  • The planning documents for the Lower Thames Crossing, the proposed tunnel under the River Thames linking Kent and Essex, run to 360,000 pages, and the application process alone cost £297 million. That’s more than double what it costs in Norway actually building the longest road tunnel in the world.

That’s according to a new study of British attitudes by Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes, and Sam Bowman.



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