Not sure if that still holds true nowadays with renewable energy and storage having got cheaper and cheaper.
Materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket. We’re still to see the renewables going further than the residential proof of concept on a society scale.
God bless plutonium.
Whilst battery demand will increase it's expected costs will continue to decrease - "Innovation reduces total capital costs of battery storage by up to 40% in the power sector by 2030 in the Stated Policies Scenario"(3)
1. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso?date=2024-11-27 2. https://modoenergy.com/research/ercot-battery-energy-storage... 3. https://www.iea.org/reports/batteries-and-secure-energy-tran...
We haven't even specified what kind of storage technology we're talking about yet you already state that "materials used for current storage technologies are expected to see demand skyrocket". Are you referring to batteries? There are countless other technologies to "store" energy.
Home batteries can be part of a grid level response but this is nascent.
France's nuclear program was also very, very expensive: https://www.i-sis.org.uk/The_True_Costs_of_French_Nuclear_Po...
Skimming your source, I would not trust it very much.
They imported and still import just as much oil as anyone else.
For people interested about a real inquiry discussing the price of the french nuclear program [1] which is actually exhaustive and well documented.
[1]: https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/EzPublish/themat...
Maybe also it's a provider thing ? From country to country, you can always have things that seem randomly more expensive. Germany is more renewable but more expensive than France, is it because of their national company is benefiting citizen properly or is it because the remaining gas part drives up the cost ?
Rome wasn't built in a day and I find it hilarious to advocate for nuclear power instead, if the average construction time (not even taking into account the prior mountain of bureaucracy) is over a decade. Not a single nuclear power plant built in past 15 years in Europe has been on time or on budget. Not even close.
Lignite numbers:
2019: 114TWh, 18.7%
2020: 92TWh, 16%
2021: 110TWh, 18.8%
2022: 116TWh, 20%
2023: 88TWh, 17%
I've seen steadier terminal alcoholics.
Renewables have increased significantly, but much of that is displacing nuclear power. The remainder, plus a small increase in natural gas, his displaced hard coal and a small amount of lignite. Presumably hard coal is more expensive.
The overall trend is coal is reducing, but it's a poor show compared to Great Britain [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany#...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_in_Great_Britain#/...
Yeah, Germany did have hard coal mines but they closed a few years back as they've gotten too deep and difficult to access to be economically viable (and it was subsidised until 2018), so Germany imports hard coal. Meanwhile germany is either #1 or #2 lignite producer.
Nuclear is still a bit cheaper per Watt and less carbon intensive, as it involves less infrastructure, logistics and batteries overall. It's also somewhat more reliable, as it doesn't depend on sun or wind (the former of which France often lacks).
Also, I am hopeful that nuclear power plant construction delays will only improve in the near future, as Europe rebuilds its expertise in nuclear engineering, which it lost after the past decades of anti-nuclear waves.
Finally, I don't see fossil fuel usage going down much in Germany in the link you gave, if at all. Which is the only thing that matters, ecologically speaking.
LCOE [1] of nuclear power in Europe and the USA is roughly thrice that of solar or wind [2]. In China it is about even. If you do not trust the Deutsche Bank report, the World Nuclear Association comes to roughly the same conclusion but assumes a lower discount, thus making nuclear power more attractive. [3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levelized_cost_of_electricity [2] https://www.dbresearch.de/PROD/RPS_DE-PROD/PROD0000000000528... [3] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...
I trust your data, but the situation here is different, most reactors are already built, and "only" need maintenance and fuel replacement.
I still stand by what I said in my previous comment about emissions per watts, etc.
[1] https://www.ccomptes.fr/sites/default/files/2021-12/20211213...
A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.
It's the LCOE, you can read what it encompasses in the link I provided.
> A significant and stable base load is important and it has shown that wind/solar makes it substantially more expensive to keep the grid stabilized, which is of course a no brainer if you don't want a blackout.
I assume you mean the utility frequency [1] when you say "base load", because you said "synchronized" and "stabilized". The frequency indeed has to be stable with a rather small margin of tolerance. Today that's mostly a job for gas turbines, though. One can hope that we find ways to store all the surplus regenerative power soon, so that we can retire those, too. Nuclear power plants, in any case, are too slow for that purpose.
Just in case you really meant load, load has no requirement to be stable. The power demands at any time can be met by dispatchable power plants, but utilities like to plan long-term, so they use some averaged load over time to determine a "base load" and buy accordingly on the electricity market. That's prudent business practice, but there is no technical reason to run low-variability power plants because of that.
No, germany is more renewable but it's also more coal, any time there's no wind the coal plants start up. And they burn lignite (because that's what in germany e.g. that's what the Baggers strip mine).
As a consequence, Germany's electricity emissions are absolute garbage: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE/12mo
It's not as bad as Poland which basically runs entirely off of coal, but it's absolutely at the bottom of the european barrel.
Also electricity storage still isn't much of a thing (and while germany has two pumped hydro station they have very little capacity), so in periods of high winds germany actually pays its neighbours to take electricity off its grid so it doesn't collapse (at this point it has hundreds of hours of negative spot prices every year).
Which is getting problematic because increase in wind generation in said neighbours means the issue is spreading as they too need to get rid of their wind production at those times.
Hm. The actual facts say otherwise, though: https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...
So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.
They don't.
> So number go DOWN, not up, is what I'm seeing.
The comment I replied to is comparing germany to france. The map I linked literally tells you that in 2024 Germany generated 370g CO2 equivalent per kWh, where France generated 32, that's an objective number you can straight up read.
Yes Germany is 58% renewable versus France's 28 (something the map also tells you), but then 30% are gas and especially coal, the link you provide agrees with that. Coal is insanely polluting, especially because Germany mainly uses lignite which is the least energy rich coal (so even more emissions for the same production), coal represents >3/4th of its emissions.
Meanwhile gas is a minor component of france's electricity mix (pretty much just peaking plants and a few combined cycle district heating plants) and coal is a rounding error.
~9%
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?Metric=Share+of+...
The issue with it is that dividing by GDP rather than, say, population or total energy used is kind of disingenuous. For instance, France's 2007 GDP can't be compared to Germany's 2022 GDP, so it's extremely hard to have an idea of what you're comparing.
You can see the per capita numbers on the same site and it's the same basic story, France had a head start but Germany is cleaning up faster (while growing GDP faster).
One of the anti-German memes going around is that their decarbonisation is via deindustrialization, so per GDP helps avoid that accusation and adjusts for people importing their carbon as the country with the heavy industry gets paid.
Meanwhile the USA, which has the most nuclear plants and yet is clearly worse than Germany and the EU average, somehow gets a free pass. How odd. It's as if we attack the countries (and states) that reduce carbon without nuclear rather than the ones emitting lots of carbon.
No catching up happened, because France also improved in the meantime, despite building no new plant in the 2007-2022 interval. And that's the issue with this measurement: it measures plenty of parasitic information. For instance, GDP growth between the 90's and now explains a large part of what you're highlighting.
Here's another chart from your site showing carbon intensity [1] which shows the improvement in carbon per energy generated is only a small part of the improvement shown in your graph.
And here's a chart [2] showing how GDP growth is the dominating factor for Germany's evolution in your graph.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-consumption-ca...
[2]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/kaya-identity-co2?country...
Thanks to renewables: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...
The difference has been cleaner energy use (e.g. better car motors) and cleaner production on non-electric energy.
Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels => France must electrify (replace fossil fuel by electricity) => produce more gridpower => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.
Upon an economic viewpoint electrifying is facilitated by the sheer availability of low-priced electricity.
> Renewables did compensate nuclear's underproduction
The underproduction episode in 2022 was mostly handled thanks to imports and consumer sobriety.
> Moreover ~60% of France's final energy is obtained by burning fossil fuels
Yeah, that's my point. France would be better served by electrifying its non-electric energy usages rather than trying to replace one clean production by another.
> => deploy new gridpower-producing equipment and such heavy industry thingies cannot be built overnight.
France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production, with electricity usage going down for two decades, and a significant share of its power being exported currently.
> The underproduction episode in 2022 was mostly handled thanks to imports and consumer sobriety.
Source?
> France would be better served by electrifying its non-electric energy usages rather than trying to replace one clean production by another.
I disagree:
Renewables-produced electricity reduces fossil the amount -fuel-produced electricity: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electricity-fossil-renewa...
A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
Producing more electricity enables us to contain its price, boosting electrification.
Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants (on average) seems adequate to me. New nuclear (Flamanville-3 EPR) isn't adequate (6x times overcostly, at least 12 years late).
> France has a healthy margin before needing to rush production,
Electrification has to ramp up, therefore if everything goes as planned it will soon be over. Waiting is dangerous.
> with electricity usage going down for two decades
Production nearly-flat from 2004 until COVID: https://ourworldindata.org/energy-production-consumption
> a significant share of its power being exported currently.
The challenge (getting rid of fossil fuels and the necessary powergrid, see ENTSO-e) is at continental-scale.
Why the hell would you show me the same graph I showed you earlier, but with only 3 years of history? That graph, over time, shows that fossil hovers around 10%, has been for decades now. Renewables is not decreasing fossil use here.
> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.
> Starting right now to build in order to replace 40-years old nuclear plants
Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck about CO2, all you care about is for renewables to replace nuclear, another clean energy source. All of your discourse is warped and dishonest because you want to pretend that you care about catbon emissions when, in fact, you don't.
If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.
I quoted it 4 days ago (see above). I propose my interpretation of it, for the objective reader to make his mind. Renewables' share is up, therefore they replace fossil fuels because without renewables France should burn more fossil fuels.
>> A large part of resources needed by electrification isn't needed to build electricity-producing equipment.
> As France is a market economy, the issue isn't resources, money is.
If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying let's say we live in distinct universes.
> Here is the issue: you don't give a fuck
No arguments, therefore you rant about what (in your opinion) I think. This is moot.
> If you cared about carbon emissions you would focus on means to lower carbon emissions: electrifiying.
I already explained, above, why deploying electricity-producing plants is just as important and urgent. You didn't even try to counter-argument.
Once again the declining share is nuclear. Fossils are stable as the data you quote shows.
> If in your opinion each and every resource (expertise, material...) used to deploy electricity-producing plants is 100% adequate for electrifying
My point is that this is irrelevant since the bottleneck is money. We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.
> You didn't even try to counter-argument.
Why would I try when we're at the point where you don't even acknowledge raw data?
OMG, is it a joke? Consumption is stable, OK? Nuclear produced less, OK? Therefore renewables compensated for nuclear declining production, OK? Therefore burning more fossil fuels was not necessary, OK? Therefore renewables replaced them, OK?
> the bottleneck is money
My point is solid even given this perspective: the way public money is used is of paramount importance: government recently ordered new nuclear reactors, and also subsidizes renewables in order to compensate past huge subsides to nuclear. More money here, less money there.
> We don't live in a command economy where material resources and workers are assigned by the state on a given project.
Read above.
> you don't even acknowledge raw data
Raw data, as explained, shows that renewables enabled France to avoid burning more fossil fuel. This is a fact, like it or not.
In low renewables availability episodes, there isn’t more fossil production, we simply ramp nuclear up.
Nope. This is provably false, and even the pertinent official authority (RTE) says so: https://x.com/factsory/status/1712155368304898137
Details:
And both videos you quote state clearly that the production program is built using merit order, in which renewables always come first.
You didn't watch or understand them. The first thread referenced, on x.com, offers a link towards https://www.youtube.com/live/xP4jL4b_Nnk?si=P4X_qMV9vtkpVD7z... This guy is RTE's official representative. Please listen to what he says, and let me know whether you persist to deny or reckon.
> merit order
A technical merit order, established to optimize and therefore to prefer the most adequate (overall) source. It is enforced for ages and for all sources, it isn't some arbitrarily established rule aiming at hurting poor nuclear lil'baby. If nuclear cannot compete it will disappear. The processus already started.
There is a significant mismatch between reality and the kind of headlines we see in tech-focused media. These hype future products as if they were already widely available, which creates a false idea of the actual situation in the real world.
At least some of that is surely because of renewable power, mostly wind.
Currently, battery grid-scale storage stores seconds.
You'd need an increase of several orders of magnitude for this to work.
Even if manufacturing costs were magically 0, the amount of lithium, copper and other materials required would be unsustainable.
It's not going to happen.
You don’t use lithium for long term energy storage. You just have very shallow understanding of issues at hand.