Nuclear-happy France is burning way less fossil fuels than anti-nuclear Germany. If I'm in Germany and I want fossil fuel companies to make more money, I'll fund anti-nuclear protests.
Why would you oppose a decade long project you could upset at any time which ends up requiring short term energy planning? I think you meant protests in France.
Yes, I can believe that. Anyone who tries to say "let's wait for nuclear and not deploy solar/wind" is not rational, unless driven by the idea to sell more fossil fuels.
My personal position - let's allow building both; nuclear and solar/wind are complementary, not exclusive; but the government funding should mostly go to solar/wind at the moment, as they are the fastest & cheapest way to reduce CO2 emissions in the places, where these resources are available. And there are a lot of places like that.
Conservative opposition are pushing heavily for nuclear energy in a country that has more access to renewables than almost any other.
And what happens is that the arguments over why you need it, where the reactors would be placed etc. are causing doubts from investors that long term, bi-partisan support for renewables exists. And investors need stability to invest.
Why would consensus against renewables work? Renewables work from pretty small-scale all the way up to industrial deployments (well, not in Alaska/Siberia but in Australia ...)
So consensus shouldn't matter because if Joe the hairdresser or Jane the mechanic decide they, personally, want to do renewables, they can. Just by themselves. Hell, in most Australian cities ... I bet it would work in anything but the CBD.
We are talking about major renewable projects not small scale solar panels on your roof.
Even small scale needs stability in government support because you need to invest in the grid and energy storage to handle the excess in power generated by solar panels during the day.
"The grid" is literally the thing that joins battery parks (eg: the massive one in Adelaide South Australia) to rooftop providers, wind farms, household and commercial electricity consumers
"Investing in the grid" means expanding capacity in order to meet increased electricity demands as electric vehicles replace fosil fuel vehicles and increasing switching and grid intelligence to better handle a more distributed supply and demand.
More solar + more batteries and thermal storage + better grid are all things that grow hand in hand.
Of course investment in the grid is required to meet large scale population demands.
It might be cheaper to waste it than to reclaim it, if integrating that source to the grid is too expensive. When generation significantly exceeds demand, that scenario will happen.
Renewables still need fossil fuel generators as a backstop as battery technology still isn’t good enough to meet the full electric demand when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Nuclear fills this need as an always available electricity source cheaper than fossil fuels without the carbon pollution.
Nuclear in current designs doesn’t really fill this need because it can’t be economically spun up and down to match renewables’ down-periods. Current designs allow some load following but only a very limited amount, and the capital costs are still so high that it doesn’t pay to run the unit at partial output. Maybe someone will find a design (SMRs possibly) that changes this, but it will take at least a decade or two to get deployed and then it will be in competition with battery tech that exists in 10-20 years, which will probably eat all the low-hanging profitable use-cases.
Exxon did this with a carbon tax in the US. Here is a quote of an exxon lobbyist bragging about it:
"Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, well what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax,"
By itself a carbon tax in the US would be extremely regressive as the vast majority of poor people here still need to drive to work, and they would immediately see the price increase at the pump.
It would have to be offset with some kind of tax rebate, but it’s harder to explain a more complex program like traffic to the voters.
They'd get it completely after the first week, if you administered it correctly. The right way to do a motor fuel tax is to fully refund it per capita, frequently. No means tests or any shit like that, just mail checks on Friday.
Why aren't the fossil fuel companies moving to renewables and nuclear themselves? Wouldn't it make better long-term business sense? They can then keep selling fossil fuels as long as they have a market to sell them in, but if the market dries up due to regulations — no worries.
I might have a naive view of this but a dual strategy would seem to make more business sense. I mean — every dollar invested in lobbying for fossil fuels seems to have a higher expected value of money if it was spent on expanding renewable and nuclear operations.
For the simple fact that even if it's true that renewables are cheaper than oil, it's still a much higher investment to build a renewable plant and hire people who know how to work it than it is to continue existing operations with existing people.
Edit: In addition, if the environmentalits were to "win", that would turn essentially the entirety of these companies' existing capital into 0 value. So not lobbying to stop that is extremely dangerous.
>it's still a much higher investment to build a renewable plant and hire people who know how to work it than it is to continue existing operations with existing people.
But someone is still doing that investment and will eventually reap the returns, so it still seems short sighted for existing energy companies not to try and outcompete them.
>that would turn essentially the entirety of these companies' existing capital into 0 value.
Honestly, I'd be kind of happy if these companies invested in renewables (even with government subsidies) and were lobbying the government to buy back the fossil fuel infrastructure that isn't needed anymore...
That is the most ridiculously inverted truth I’ve ever seen regarding nuclear. This is article talks about the petrochemical industry’s long history of opposition to nuclear but you can find a lot of other information just by googling it.
Fossil fuel companies best bet right now is to focus on natural gas and oil, to be used in thermal power stations. When power prices fluctuating, they can get more of the money from customers using less fuel, hitting the grid when supply is at the lowest point.
To help this they can get governments to pay subsidies for ongoing operations in the name of grid stability. The plants can also be used in theory with bio gas, so subsidies for construction is also on the table.
In Europe, natural gas even got declared as being green and the energy of choice to stop climate change. They also managed to get a bunch of exceptions added regarding oil, especially when used in industry and shipping. Coal was really the only thing fossil fuel companies needed to sacrifice in order to have a profitable future.
Pray tell, what is "unrealistic" about nuclear energy as an alternative?
There are only 436 nuclear reactors in the world (for comparisons sake, there are more than 2400 coal power plants worldwide, and the US alone have more than 980 natural-gas power stations (2022).
And yet this small number of nuclear reactors produces 10% of global electricity.
Nuclear energy has a levelized cost of energy that is about 5-10x more expensive than utility solar, with solar expected to continue becoming exponentially cheaper
And? Solar cannot do it, it's as simple as that, so the cost is irrelevant.
> becoming exponentially cheaper
"Exponentially" is very unlikely. It may become somewhat cheaper, at first, if supply increases. Which btw. is also true for nuclear power.
But then what? We cannot power the world with solar alone, for the simple reason that we cannot store that much energy during the dark hours. Hydro storage is geographically limited, and batteries, well, let's just say the entire world output of Lithium over the last 3 decades didn't make enough to even store the electricity the US alone requires in a single day. And that is before be electrify further.
Yes, we should build more solar. There is no reason to have roofs not covered in panels. But all solar can do, is help. It is not the solution to our energy demands.
> Exponentially" is very unlikely. It may become somewhat cheaper, at first, if supply increases. Which btw. is also true for nuclear power.
Not “at first” but demonstrably over time and ongoing. Yes it will cease eventually but it seems like that’s not near.
> But then what? We cannot power the world with solar alone, for the simple reason that we cannot store that much energy during the dark hours. Hydro storage is geographically limited, and batteries, well, let's just say the entire world output of Lithium over the last 3 decades didn't make enough to even store the electricity the US alone requires in a single day. And that is before be electrify further.
Powering the us on batteries for a full day is not a realistic goal. But batteries are already cost competitive and shuttering gas peaker plants.
> Yes, we should build more solar. There is no reason to have roofs not covered in panels. But all solar can do, is help. It is not the solution to our energy demands.
Rooftop solar is actually more expensive than nuclear actually. Or at least a year or two ago.
If you build a bunch of nuclear you will not be able to compete on price with cheap renewables during the day. But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off so you’ll have to still generate and operate at a loss. Which means to be profitable you have to raise prices to make up for it in the off hours. Which, in turn, makes you less competitive and makes it more commercially viable for batteries.
Tl;dr, market forces will punish you. Renewables and batteries and fossil fuels as backup are the clear winners
> But you can’t just turn a nuclear reactor on and off
No, but I can regulate its output up and down. You don't have to turn a reactor off entirely, its output can be regulated up and down without shutting down completely.
> and makes it more commercially viable for batteries.
The problem with batteries isn't commercial viability. The problem is physical availability. There simply isn't enough Li in the world to make Solar as powerful as it would need to be to stem a majority of our energy requirements, and as of now, we don't have another battery technology that would be suitable.
At a macro view, the whole thing isn't an economic question.
Here are the three facts:
1. We cannot continue with fossil fuel power as we did before (because climate change)
2. Solar isn't up to the task of taking (among other reasons because we don't have the storage required)
3. The worlds energy demands are increasing. Maybe it could be made to grow slower, but reversing it is unlikely
So, what options does that leave us with? Wind suffers from similar problems as Solar. Hydro is geographically limited, as is Tidal. Geothermal is likely too weak. Fusion power doesn't exist yet. And as cool as a Dyson-Swarm would be, that's even further away than Fusion.
1) lithium mining is up 6x since 10 years ago. You shouldn’t assume the average over ten years is a good indicator about capacity to mine. Mining rates are growing quickly.
2) there are competing materials for new battery tech besides lithium
3) battery capacity deployed per year is growing exponentially
4) when you have large over supplies of energy you can pursue hydrogen. Green hydrogen should be at parity with grey hydrogen in less than a decade. Not cost competitive with just using fuels or batteries for utility scale, but slowly getting there.
5) commercial viability absolutely matters. Subsidizing an expensive source of energy rather than building more and more capacity for cheap energy is a bad strategy while using fossil fuels as a crutch in the interim is a bad strategy. Running a nuclear plant at low capacity craters its financial viability.
California is a bad example for nuclear, as it's the perfect spot for solar. On the opposite, Finland lacks sun, but enjoys their new reactor (even though, since it's another one-off project, it's over budget).
I don’t live in Finland. In fact, Finland’s population is half that of Michigan’s, so I’m sure they’d be fine with solar and wind as well. They already get a quarter of their power from hydro.
Sorry, your confidence betrays you here. Please, look up the altitude of Helsinki. In January they get 6 hours of sunlight per day and it's almost universally cloudy winter-time.
Nuclear & wind are better options for Finland and they pursue both ([1], [2], [3])
And Finland absolutely could provide energy to its entire population with renewables excluding nuclear. They haven't and that's their choice, but you cannot claim with any legitimacy that it's not possible because of latitude.
Yeah, sure, lets take a technology where the main challenge is obstructionism by NIMBYs who bought in to too much FUD, and judge it by a state notorious for enabling NIMBYism.
Yeah they're trying to delay the decay of their valuation.
A few years ago went looking at producing hydrogen by electrolysis for ammonia production. There was the usual 'well maybe' stuff but nothing showing anyone was doing anything concrete. Few days ago checked a again and there are a bunch of corporate news items about building electrolysers and hydrogen storage to replace natural gas reformer units.
The problem the fossil fuel companies have is they can convince low information stupids that oil, gas, coal and nuclear are the only viable technologies. But they can't convince the accountants.
Yours seems like an unnecessarily cynical take. For sure oil companies try to green wash themselves with investment in green tech that seems too far fetched. Sure.
But there are also many genuinely good intentioned people working on that green tech because they genuinely see a possible future application.
For that matter oil companies invested in battery tech as well. For the most part they just want to appear like they are doing something. But their green washing shouldn't discredit the green tech itself.
Oil companies know they are going to join the original oil suppliers, the dinosaurs, soon enough and they need to invest and build IP in renewables to be able to transition over to the green side.
The reason firms “become the next Kodak” is because they’re busy protecting their enormously profitable legacy business from competing technology. This can be actually rational, provided the people doing this sell or realize enough profit on their assets before the older business disappears.
I read an article where the author made a point that oil and gas companies aren't setup to compete in the renewables business. And they have the problem that companies that are already exist in that space.
When it comes to building out a deep water oil rig they have no competition. But when it comes to set up an offshore wind farm marine services companies have the experience, equipment, and are nimble.
Build solar panels? That's manufacturing and there is a whole other industry that makes commodity manufactured goods at scale. Batteries and solar panels are both extremely high volume commodity goods.
> "For example, on wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That's the only reason to build them. They don't make sense without the tax credit."
I'm an electrical engineer and am personally mixed on wind and solar. I'm in a Canadian province that has fantastic solar and wind potential but doesn't have the geography for effective pumped hydro storage. Battery storage, currently, is so ridiculously badly priced compared to nuclear. For the same price you can get a battery plant with 8 hours of 300MW capacity, or a SMR with 18-24 months of capacity before scheduled downtime for refueling. Even if you're in the "nuclear always goes over budget" camp, that SMR would have to go dramatically over budget to cease to be cost competitive.
I'm quite convinced that in the medium term it's pretty much got to be wind + solar, hydro, natural gas, and nuclear as a mix. They're complementary! Wind and solar are great at providing "free" energy into the grid when they're producing. Hydro is great but there's only so much available for a given geography without having other negative environmental effects. Natural gas is good for handling peak capacity quickly for situations where the other sources can't ramp up quick enough. Nuclear's great for providing steady baseload.
During the winter my province only gets 8 hours of sunlight per day and it's often enough -40 outside. Right now the vast majority of our homes are heated with natural gas; on a per kWh hour on an annual basis the gas company sells 3x the energy that the electricity company sells. If we're going to drop our carbon emissions dramatically then we're going to need to convert to either electric heat or district heating (probably via massive geothermal plants, which we can get heat out of but the reserves aren't good enough for electricity generation). And if we do switch to electric heat we need to do so with zero fear that we're going to freeze when we have a prolonged -40 degree stretch of calm cold 8-hour days.
Citing an article from ten years ago on renewables is like citing an article from the 1800s. Go look at the cost and deployment curves for solar PV and wind. Make sure you focus on recent numbers: you’re out of date if your information is even a year old.
While I don't have any links handy, my understanding from doing some digging into this a few months ago is that currently off-shore wind is awesome and has about a 40% capacity factor. On-shore not so much.
As far as the battery capacity and pricing goes, that math was done using the Wikipedia pricing for Tesla Megapacks quite recently.
The vast majority of sources I've found for trying to actually compare prices typically involves levelized-cost-of-energy (LCOE), which as far as I can tell completely ignores the intermittency problem; that's where I did a dive into the battery storage prices and found them eye-wateringly bad.
I'm strongly not opposed to wind and solar; I'm just strongly suspicious of anyone who suggests that, in my climate and geography, we're capable of replacing all of our electricity generation and heating (currently natgas) with solar and wind without some form of baseload long-term backup. I prefer that baseload backup to be nuclear and not coal or natural gas, as is the current status quo here.
I did just do a relative cursory search to try to find some current numbers but the majority of articles had theses like "wind is struggling due to inflation and interest rates but is going to bounce back this year!" so that's... not super useful.
That's awesome but assuming that that means getting Tesla Megapacks at half the price (inverters and infrastructure would likely prevent a 60% reduction and it makes the math easier), you're now getting 16 hours at 300MW out of your batteries for the same price as a 300MW nuclear plant that runs 18-24 months before refuelling.
Quite the opposite, there's clear evidence that fossil fuel companies heavily supported anti-nuclear action groups. Because nuclear energy is just as much of a threat to their business as renewables are.
> Quite the opposite, there's clear evidence that fossil fuel companies heavily supported anti-nuclear action groups.
Fossil companies fund both camps. They are especially interested in closing-down existing nuclear plants, as it immediately creates a big market for them, but it's also useful to them to delay deploying new solar/wind capacity (and thus, funding the wait-for-new-nuclear or even wait-for-fusion campaigns)
If you keep it forever in R&D you can have it as a carrot and never as a competitor. Tons and tons of cash that could go into battery or panel factories. And because they have the media in their pocket they can easily turn the knob on favor or disfavor of nuclear power.
Solar is the solution now because America dithered and fumbled nuclear energy in the 60s - 80s. Now nuclear cannot be built because every estimate has been 1/10th the actual cost for plants built in this millennium. Glow rocks are dead - use fusion power from the sky.
They probably flipped 5-15 years ago. Before then nuclear was the biggest threat to fossil energy. Now solar is, and pro-nuclear is the best anti-solar.
You need to back that up with numbers, because mine say otherwise. Ireland (of all places) has sizeable renewable running and solar roofs have government subsidies.