| What matters is to close down the fossil fuel plants for good. The output of wind is on average 45% of maximum capacity for offshore wind, meaning if you have 100% of wind during optimal conditions and 0% when the wind is still on average you get around 45%. For land based wind parks the numbers are low, around 25%. So far there is very little investment to build out wind beyond having 100% wind in optimal conditions. Germany has almost hit that point, and if we look at neighbor Denmark then we can see what happens when it does reach 100%. Building wind beyond full capacity turns uneconomical quickly, as investors found out in Denmark. The result is that the coal and natural gas plants will burn and continue polluting the world. The competitiveness of renewable is based on the cheap initial costs while it goes towards max capacity. The price tag does not include overcapacity, the batteries, cryogenic storage, power-to-gas and so on. It works fine as long as we don't think about the fossil fuels that get burned when the wind is still. Nuclear plants have a linear cost. Going from 10% to 20% cost just as much as going from 90% to 100%. No overcapacity, no batteries, no conversion loss. You add 10% nuclear plants and you can demolish 10% fossil fueled plants. You build 10% additional wind farms and the same old fossil plants must remain. You demolish 10% of the nuclear plants, and you have to build the same amount of new fossil fueled plants in order to compensate when the wind is not blowing. New fossil fueled plants are going to get used, investments is going to be repaid, and political influence fill make sure that they continue to operate. > What matters is the total CO2 released, If people really thought so they would look at the electricitymap and look which countries does exactly that. Who has the lowest total CO2? The answer: those that can produce a constant base load without releasing CO2. Hydro or nuclear. Those that have invested most in renewable are not the ones with lowest total CO2. |
In your nuclear-only scenario, without storage you'd need enough capacity to cover peak demand. This can be 2X or even 3X higher than average demand, so there would indeed be significant overcapacity. Very expensive!
Typical nuclear plants are also not good at demand response: to operate efficiently, their output must remain constant most of the time. Over-capacity at off-peak times is potentially a big problem on grids with a large portion of nuclear.
Some combination of storage, peaker plants, and demand response is required regardless of whether nuclear or renewables are used. The most cost-effective future grids are likely to use a diverse mix of technologies.