nuclear energy

Jo Nova: Renewable Fiasco: If Germany just kept nuclear power, it could have saved $600b and cut emissions by 73%

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Phillippsburg Nuclear Power Plant by Lothar Neumann, Gernsbach

By Jo Nova

If the Germans just did nothing at all, it would have been Greener

Germany already had nuclear power in 2002, if they just kept it and didn’t build all the wind and solar plants, they wouldn’t have had to spend 697 Billion Euro on subsidies, and would have cut their emissions by 73% more.

If ever there is a statistic that says there is something rotten in the State of Climate Panic, this is surely it. I mean, does CO2 matter or doesn’t it? Do the Greens care at all, or even a bit? If there was a climate emergency and The Greens were worried about CO2, they might have protested that the EnergieWende was a reckless experiment. Instead the  But if the Greens were tools for communists, foreign states or banker-investors, then they might keep choosing options that benefit other countries, help Bankers or just make Big Government bigger.

Either the German Greens have utterly failed at the very task they set out to do, or they were really aiming at something else.

Ross Pomery writes at RealClearScience and  WattsUpWithThat

Study Quantifies Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear Power

At the dawn of the millennium, Germany launched an ambitious plan to transition to renewable energy. “Die Energiewende” initiated a massive expansion of solar and wind power, resulting in a commendable 25 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2022…

In 2002, nuclear power supplied about a fifth of Germany’s electricity. Twenty-one years later, it supplied none. A layperson might think that cheap wind and solar could simply fill the gap, but it isn’t so simple.

Jan Emblemsvåg, a Professor of Civil Engineering at Norway’s NTNU just published a study comparing the ambitious German Energiewende renewable program with nuclear power:

“what if Germany had spent their money on nuclear power and not followed their policy from 2002 through 2022 (20 years); would Germany have achieved more emission reductions and lower expenses?”

Even German bureaucrats admit Energiewende “poses a threat to the German economy”:

German Federal Accounting Office (Bundesrechnungshof) writes about the German policy dubbed ‘Die Energiewende’ in German, and it concludes: ‘The Bundesrechnungshof warns that the energy transition in its current form poses a threat to the German economy and overburdens the financial capacity of electricity-consuming companies and households’ (Bundesrechnungshof Citation2021a).

A whole lot of wind (green) and solar (orange) power were added to the German grid and it was worse than useless:

Energiewende, Germany

Given these results, there can be no doubt whatsoever that if Germany had invested in NPPs [Nuclear Power Plants] instead of VREs [Variable Renewable Energy], Germany would have decarbonised more with far less nominal expenditures. The short conclusion is that Germany would have reached its climate goals with a substantial margin at half the expenditures of Energiewende.

The Germans have done this experiment so we don’t have to

Just burn that money in a pyre to the Weather Gods:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642#d1e128

These costs do not included the added burden of expensive electricity on businesses and homes, the opportunity costs of money that could have been spent elsewhere, or the loss of talent, brains and industry to other countries.

Building new nuclear plants was still cheaper than wind and solar

The paper goes through another scenario where more nuclear plants were built with careful estimations of the costs and long times to construct plants and still concludes that the Germans would have saved $330 billion euro.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642#d1e128

Not coincidentally, in 2024 Germany has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe, business confidence is low, and  VW have just announced that after 87 years in production, they might have to close their German factories.

Volkswagen, which was founded in 1937, said on Monday that it could no longer rule out unprecedented plant closures in Germany as it seeks ways to save several billion euros.

Chief executive Oliver Blume said: “The economic environment has become even tougher and new players are pushing into Europe. Germany as a business location is falling further behind in terms of competitiveness.”

Volkswagen employs around 650,000 workers globally, almost 300,000 of whom are in Germany, and the threat of factory closures sparked an immediate fierce backlash …

REFERENCE

Emblemsvåg, J. (2024). What if Germany had invested in nuclear power? A comparison between the German energy policy the last 20 years and an alternative policy of investing in nuclear power. International Journal of Sustainable Energy, 43(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/14786451.2024.2355642

Finland Electricity Prices Drops to BELOW ZERO Due to Efficiency of Nuclear Power Plants

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From Geller Report

Finland Electricity Prices Drops to BELOW ZERO Due to Efficiency of Nuclear Power Plants

This is what common sense looks like.

Insider: Finland was dealing with an unusual problem on Wednesday: clean electricity that was so abundant it sent energy prices into the negative. While much of Europe was facing an energy crisis, the Nordic country reported that its spot energy prices dropped below zero before noon (Insider).

Marian L Tupy: Finnish electricity price drops BELOW ZERO after the latest nuclear reactor is switched on. That is what the world could have looked like if the greens did not stop humanity from expanding nuclear power. Remember: nuclear power = no CO2 emissions (Twitter)

#f6f6f6;color: ;font-family: sans-serif">Finnish Nuclear Plant Throttles Output After Electricity Prices “Become Too Cheap”

As we detailed in early May, the transition from testing to regular output last month saw Finland’s first nuclear power-plant drive electricity prices dramatically lower.

by Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, May 25, 2023 – 02:45 AM

As yle reports, the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in Eurajoki, southwest Finland, started regular electricity production in mid-April, about 14 years behind schedule

Since then prices for power in Finland have continued to plunge as the efficiency of the plant flooded the grid with ‘new’ energy.

So much in fact that early on Wednesday of last week, the market price for electricity dropped below zero cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) and for hours after that the price was only 0.3 cents per kWh at its highest, according to the country’s grid operator, Fingrid.

That was unacceptable and prompted the plant’s owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) to significantly cut back its output…

“Electricity production must also be profitable for nuclear power plants, and when the price is particularly low, there may be situations where output is limited,” TVO communications manager, Johanna Aho, said.

According to Aho, cutting back on nuclear power production due to excessively low electricity prices is very rare, but not unheard of.

Janne Kauppi, an energy markets advisor at Finnish Energy, agreed with that sentiment.

“There haven’t been many situations where nuclear power output has been regulated specifically because of low prices,” Kauppi explained.

“When prices go negative on the electricity market, basically anyone who can adjust their production will do it, so that they don’t have to pay for their own production,” Kauppi noted.

The Finnish example is a testament to how nuclear can play a part in solving the current energy crisis, with consumers still paying sky-high fees for energy in many European countries.

However, the hypocrisy is of course that when power prices were extremely high in 2022, hurting consumers – it was all Russia’s fault; but now that prices are plummeting, operators can’t have that and withdraw supply to hurt consumers.

Do you see a pattern here?