A NEW national training centre in Cannington for EDF Energy, the company building the proposed new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C, was opened last week by Energy Minister Andrea Leadsom.

She joined EDF chief executive officer Vincent de Rivaz, Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, councillors and other dignitaries at Cannington Court, a new multi-million pound investment to meet the company’s training needs and allow collaboration with academic and industry partners.

The Grade I listed building, a restored 12th century Benedictine convent, now combines the latest in energy saving technology and digital learning. It forms part of EDF Energy’s programme for all staff, which includes an online hub and courses run across the UK.

Mrs Leadsom said: “Cannington Court offers a perfect synergy between past, present and future. The new buildings dovetail neatly with the old; both combining to offer a first class learning experience for students looking to build a bright future.

“All of which underpins our ambitions for the future of our energy sector and our desire to prepare the ground for new nuclear builds in this country; facilities that will help deliver secure, low carbon and affordable energy.”

Mr de Rivaz said: “Today is the realisation of a vision we set out several years ago when we chose the ancient buildings of Cannington Court to be the hub of our modern training facilities, known as campus.”

He said the campus would provide state of the art training, learning and development, with pioneering learning technologies, digital tools to discover new ways of learning, a high class simulator, and latest virtual reality hardware.

It is powered with a ground breaking energy system designed by the company’s teams, using ground source heat pumps and solar thermal technology, coupled with solar photovoltaic technology, providing over 50 per cent of its energy needs.

”I want our apprentices to work here with our executive team; our graduates to be in sessions with our senior managers. This mixing will remind us that we, too, are a link between the past and the future, just like the building,” he said.

EDF Energy is committed to developing the new skills and ideas to build a low-carbon society, he said, and Somerset would be at the heart of the transition to the UK’s low carbon future.

Speaking after the official opening, Mr Liddell-Grainger said the new campus would offer huge opportunities to local people for years to come: “We are looking at least at a ten-year construction phase with the possibility of even longer-term developments on the Hinkley Point site,” he said.

“The presence of EDF here in such a significant way holds out the prospect of thousands of well-paid, highly-skilled jobs being created over the coming years, as we watch Europe’s biggest civil construction project take shape.

“In the short term, I am hoping there will be openings for some of the staff who will be losing their jobs at Watchet paper mill. But in the long term it is already quite clear that the entire economy of this end of Somerset is going to be completely revitalised.”