Yup, and we will end up paying 50% more for our energy usage, just because of political swings.
Countries that need a lot of reserve energy is paying a lot of subsidies to fossil fuels. Year in, year out. First you need to pay them in order to keep the plants on standby when renewables are plenty, and then you need to pay them again when demand exceeds the productions of renewables. The outcome is very large and steady stream of money going into the pockets of those who invest into fossil fuel.
Nuclear would need a lot in order to catch up to the same level of subsidies.
That seems to be proving the oppposite of your point.
It's also interesting that France has generic "electricity" subsidies that are bigger than their "nuclear" subsidies and yet 70% of their electricity is nuclear.
Could you explain the logic behind that idea that France subsidizes to fossil fuel is proof that nuclear is expensive? To me it is proof that the fossil fuel industry will extract its cut as long as the grid is dependent on it.
Also, a technical details. In actually billions, France is not subsidizing fossil fuels more than Germany. France total subsidize is about half of Germany, so the actually money that goes to fossil fuels are quite much smaller as a result.
You said that this was wrong, because countries that deployed renewables needed to pay fossil fuels to standby and then pay them again when there's no wind or sun.
To back this up you pointed to a document about level of subsidies.
That document shows that Germany gives less subsidies to fossil fuels than other countries with nuclear plants, notably France, as a percent of GDP.
You now appear to be trying to wiggle out of this on a technicality because Germany has a bigger economy than France, though even then the final numbers are 12.2 billion vs 11.5 billion.
But, let's pretend that's what you were saying, oh look, countries with nuclear on average subsidize fossil fuels more in absolute terms.
(This is because they are bigger economies, so this is an entirely spurious correlation but even playing by your changed rules, your document doesn't support your argument).
Then she mentioned that she just had bought a new car. I asked what kind, it's a hybrid. I asked why? Well, because her old car was using so much fuel, and with recent price hikes, that became too expensive, so she just bought one that was significantly more fuel efficient.
The _exact_ same person! Just 2 minutes after claiming monetary incentives don't work demonstrated that it actually worked for her!
I have high hopes that price hikes are what convinces people to change their behavior. Not ads, not appealing to ethics or conciousness or "the future of your kids" or pictures of dying polar bears. You need to feel it in your wallet, then you act, plain and simple.
In that case, we should make the price of power relative to your wealth, shouldn't we? I'm guessing you're an academic and work in tech or consulting, so you make two, three times the national average if you live in Germany. Trippling the price of power will barely register on your level, so you have little incentive to conserve energy. However, if we said that e.g. a kwh costs 1/15000 of your personal wealth, you'd have a lot of incentive, because even if you start the year as a billionaire, you'd be broke if you used 15000kwh.
I have a feeling that none of the -typically well-off- proponents of "we must make the people pay more so that they stop consuming" will be a fan of that.
I recently purchased a hybrid vehicle, and I find myself much more conscientious about how much energy I am using.
I wonder: if every house only had a certain allotment of energy each day to use at the “regular” price, would energy consumption go down?