Which is why it's not really the cheapest. Fossil fuel and nuclear power don't have these associated costs.
France: 50 million tons of CO2 per year in the energy sector
Germany: 50% renewables
France: 70% nuclear
Since you've repeated the same argument at least 5 times by now, even though others have informed you about the wrong conclusion, I must assume it is meant to misinform.
It was kind of a statistical tie the last time I looked at this (wind was possibly slightly in the lead out of the three in terms of CO2 per KWh) but the wind and solar numbers seemed to be trending downwards over time.
To be clear, any non-carbon energy source can decarbonize almost to zero assuming all the lifecycle activities are converted to the non-carbon energy as well. One exception might be hydro with it's potential biogenic methane emissions.
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
This tells us that France has a cleaner energy mix than Germany, but I don't think this cherry-picked example contributes much to the discussion otherwise, no matter how many times you repeat it.
There is of course a limit to this effect, for nuclear there's site specific engineering/design that has to happen which you don't have for ships.
But the savings in workforce cost can absolutely be realized in nuclear if a large enough pipeline of projects is developed which it looks like the French power company EDF is doing.
Let alone that we’re emitting 400 grams of CO2 per kWh on average while it’s just 50 grams on average in France.
You are also conflating production cost and end user prices.
Robust electricity networks? The US has spent trillions on transmission networks in the era dominated by coal.
Dispatchable power plants? We’ve had both base-load and peaker plants for decades. Indeed, base load gas is cost-competitive with solar now. But all base-load gen is so slow to start up and shut down that peakers can charge 2-3 orders of magnitude more per MWh.
Storage technologies? Given the exorbitant cost of peaker power, pumped storage has been in use for decades.
Demand response has also made sense for decades, but we’ve lacked the technology and market structures to make it a reality until recently. It was introduced before renewables had real market share.
In short: yes, renewables require these technologies. So does fossil-fuel generation. The IEA’s bias is showing if they’re implying that this is unique to one technology.
Of course, our current system is optimized around the characteristics of huge fossil plants, and a lot of capital will be required to optimize it around a different technology. These investments are worth it if you consider the externalities of carbon emissions. If you do it correctly, and include extreme weather costs, we should try to get to a zero emissions ASAP.
But even if you ignore externalities, as you appear to be doing, renewables are now so much cheaper that there is no economic reason to replace obsolete generation with non renewables. Under this approach, we’ll still get to 100% renewable in 40-50 years.
Based on this nuclear is an uniquely bad pairing together with renewables, and it will only get worse. Say you can make massive profits on average one hour per day, but that means all other methods of energy generation or storage can make the same, and still undercut you.
This isn't even factoring in that it is impossible to get insurance for a nuclear power plant.
Subsidy can make sense, but not because shuffling euros around under walnut shells makes the cost disappear. The argument for subsidies is generally that it helps technologies move down experience curves. This improvement is a positive externality that a pure market would not necessarily reward. Unfortunately, nuclear (and nuclear in France) has been showing NEGATIVE experience effects.
Yes, that's the first thing a terrorist would think of.
Seriously, dirty bombs are a red herring. It's the "bomb" part you should be worried about, not the "dirty" part.
To make solar demand-responsive, you just build more of it. It's really that simple.
[Edit: And, as usual, downvotes rolling in for pointing out a verifiable fact. HN being HN, I guess.]
because those cost have been socialized to the rest of us. We are all paying for higher cancer rates, temps, etc but these companies get to keep the difference as profit.
Google for “GHG emissions life cycle IPCC”. I’m currently on mobile so I don’t have the sources at hand.
If you look at the whole picture including capacity factor, flexibility, engineering overhead, etc., coal and gas are still very cheap... provided you ignore long term externalities. This is the problem.
Market fundamentalism is the doppelgänger of dogmatic Marxism and is no better.
They do, but with coal, it's the pile out back, I assume natural gas networks have tanks. Nuclear is interesting because it's almost control rods.
But your point stands; storage is a lot simpler for conventional fuels.
Germany has 50% renewables, yet their kWh causes 400 grams of CO2 on average while France with 70% nuclear causes 50 grams of CO2 per kWh on average.
The Energiewende is recent history, and the major cause of the highest electricity prices in Europe. But that wasn't enough, not even close, to bring Germany into line with France's excellently low CO2 production.
Even if the situation has changed to the point where solar is the most cost-effective option, there are a lot of lessons to be learned from Germany about how dangerous it is to take an anti-nuclear stance. They look like fools.