Europe seems to be responding well since the Ukraine war, the picture now is a lot more positive than in 2022. The UK has postionined itself well, even without the mass uptake of local generation/storage in it's domestic market.
Imagine where Europe might be if half a trillion euros was spent on renewables.
The core problem as he describes it is that European governments don't own these providers so it's a wealth transfer from taxpayers to the ultra-wealthy.
Back in the pandemic, Spain was one of the few countries that tackled the inflation shock in a better way with a windfall profits tax. Interestingly, Europe is talking about doing that now [2]. That would be smarter.
Energy prices disproportionately hurt the poor [3]. If the government owned or part-owned the energy (like Norway does) then you could offset that without burning cash to stick your head in the sand for a little bit longer.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi265I48MdI
[2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/04/europe-energy-windfall-profi...
[3]: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2023/rising-household...
https://www.ft.com/content/7e8b47b3-7931-4354-9e8a-47d75d057...
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electricity-gener... https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-profits-le...
And the reason Spain is so well insulated is because they have limited gas interconnection so they have a 'captive supplier' in Algerian gas. Algerian gas can basically only go to Spain, Morocco or the domestic Algerian market. They have some limited LNG export capacity (which is growing and will significantly change the price Spain pays longer term).
> We anticipate low solar capture prices of close to €25/MWh in 2027 and €20/MWh in 2028
> And the reason Spain is so well insulated is because they have limited gas interconnection so they have a 'captive supplier' in Algerian gas
Interestingly, this is also a factor in US pricing of natural gas and oil. The hotly contested (and ultimately cancelled) Keystone SL pipeline was designing to bring energy products to a wider market and ultimately to raise prices. Don't believe anyone who tells you oil companies build pipelines to lower prices. As an aside, different pipelines were built instead without the same controversy.
[1]: https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/spain...
The next milestones to hit are:
* A 10x increase in generation capacity
* A 100x increase in storage capacity
* A 1000x increase in seasonal storage capacity
* Electrification of heating
* Electrification of synfuels and synthetic chemical feedstocks
Full energy sovereignty is achievable within 10 years at wartime-spending levels. Probably 30 years otherwise.
Rehabilitation of nuclear is almost certainly required for the transition and a very good hedge / backstop regardless.
I hope not. We're currently getting shafted by National Grid pricing, and this is only going to mean we get to pay even more for electricity where it's generated while the south coast of the UK gets it cheap.
It's painful indeed. Today, I watched the price go negative as wind and solar reduced the gas contribution to about 3% of the mix. As that gas mix rose to 5%, the price turned around and became painfully expensive again.
Using nuclear means electricity prices will be set by the price of nuclear - which is even higher than the price of gas.
Besides, it is economically impossible to operate it as backstop as almost all of its costs are in paying back the construction loan: run it 10% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 10x, run it 1% of the time and its cost-per-kWh is increased by 100x. With that kind of budget there are suddenly a lot of alternatives to nuclear as generation-of-last-resort.