Granted, it's not like we are starting from zero - in 2021, renewables amounted to 22% of all total final consumption of all kinds of energy in EU (not just electricity, that is), up from 8.5% in 2005. It only puts forward already existing plans, accelerating development through 2030 (45% renewables) and 2050 (75% renewables), while increasing energy consumption and yes, electrifying everything.
And no it doesn't require any terrible effort or funding amounts anyone will even notice.
It doesn't require any batteries.
Panic is simply not justified. U.S. shouldn't worry because it has more than plenty of fossil fuels for the next 50-70 years even with no technology improvements, and by then, renewables will be so cheap they will fill in the market by themselves, Europe will go through RepowerEU, and China, well, the worse for them, the better for us (although with their level of industrial capacity and skill of doing things on scale, i'm sure they will be fine too).
and "In the short-term, we need alternative supplies of gas, oil and coal as quickly as possible"...
So it's about a third of the EU consumption and it may include just changing supplier, not reducing oil...
> 2030 (45% renewables) and 2050 (75% renewables)
Of course, we will not be using any Russian energy long before 2030. About half of it is gone already (all coal, about 40% of oil and 60% of gas), and at least 80% will be gone by February next year. It's just that we will see elevated prices on most energy for a few years after 2024 or so when Russian supplies will zero out for all countries apart from Hungary.
I'm optimistic about future cost reductions to both batteries and PV. I'm pessimistic about the possibility of any future cost reductions to nuclear.
Despite this, I still think there's a place for nuclear — diversity (and not just of power supplies) is inherently a good thing because it de-correlates risks.
Changing this state of affairs is certainly possible but would also take several years.
PV produces ~150W/m^2 for a very optimistic solar input of 1000W/m^2. PV produces this output only 50% of time (when sun is up, very very optimistic), so 75W averaged on 1 day
France Nuclear production is 61370MW [1]
To replace all the nuclear power plants, we would need 818 million square meters of PV panels, which amounts to a square grid of 30km.
Obviously you'd have to spread this along the longitude so that eastbound PVs would still be alight when the westbound have fallen out of the terminator.
It doesn't look like much actually. But I'm not counting the batteries to compensate for the night fallout, and I'm assuming 100% sun input all the time.
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