EDF to become UK’s biggest electricity supplier

The European Union has given a conditional green light to EDF’s takeover of British Energy, the UK’s nuclear operator.

France’s state-owned EDF is the world’s biggest nuclear electricity generator, and Europe’s biggest energy utility. It is already the fifth-biggest supplier of electricity to the UK market.

The deal would make it the largest.

Among the strings Brussels has attached to the deal are demands EDF relinquish control of some land suitable for future nuclear reactor projects, It will also have to divest itself of a gas-fired power station it already owns, and one coal-fired power station currently part of British Energy.