Co2 tax is less about externality and more about putting this extra money into renewables. When ren are underperforming but bidding low prices, they will still be compensated by the merit order which is artificially bumped even higher with CO2 tax.
And the worst thing is other regions like US or China don't have such a tax, causing industry offshoring. It's a noble case to want to subsidize ren sector, but this method is hurting EU more than helping
They could put the money into renewables, but there's nothing mandatory about that policy choice. The idea of a Pigouvian tax is to eliminate the market distortion negative externalities create. In general, you want to tax things you don't want, like pollution, not things you want, like productive work.
yes, but since this tax is done only at EU level, it causes industry offshoring and $ redistribution. EU could have just subsidized ren more instead of this tax. This way electricity/production prices would be lower while ren tech still supported
Very weak arguments there. Adding distortions is ok because other distortions exist? Non sequitur. Tariffs don't currently do everything therefore they cannot ever solve the problem? Also a non sequitur.
Imo CO2 tax should be gone to alleviate this, especially when China and US dont have it. This just causes offshoring.
If you want electrification, you need cheap electricity. If you want more ren, you put more incentives there instead of overtaxing fossils to make own industry uncompetitive
But the energy from windmills doesn't have a CO2 tax (it did at some point) and it frequently provides most, if not all, of the Danish energy (electricity) consumption. There's ONE coal fired power plant left in the country and it's scheduled to close in 2028. I get that we then have gas and garbage incinerators for heating, but we are getting electrification and lower prices.
I frankly don't care what the US and China is doing, because they're doing the wrong thing. You're arguing that because you neighbour is throwing trash in the street you want to be able to do the same. I'd much rather make environmental demands of the products being sold to be from else where, and have them live by the same rules, allowing everyone to benefit.
Co2 tax is just an indirect subsidy for renewables. When prices are low those are subsidized through cfds. When high- through merit order artificially pumped by co2 tax. This isn't bad per se but it affects negatively final consumer prices and industry which is bad.
Problem is not about the neighbors throwing trash. Unilateral co2 tax means industry relocates to regions where it's not present. In your analogy it would look like you are sending trash to US to deal with it.
DK is lucky to be able to get firming from nordics, but not everyone can do this. And from what I remember Norway already said one of the interconnectors will not have extended license at EOL
big part is co2 tax. EU now has neptune deep and could explore north sea too. In Germany current transition pathway of ren+gas and no nuclear was defined when Energiewende got introduced with red greens under Schroeder, a gazprom lover and later extended by red blacks
even in 10y h2 is economically unviable. Check out Norway/Sweden, they got tons of ren. Are they some _cheap_ H2 generation meccas? There are some chances for other synth fuels but H2 is just a pipedream
Norway and Sweden have tones of renewable energy, but relatively little intermittent energy. If the economics of H2 ever work, it'll only ever work in a grid that's driven by intermittent energy sources (wind and solar).
A hydro-driven grid does not need storage. Hell, if you have enough hydro, it can even be your storage. Not all of Europe has the geography to be able to cover their needs with just hydro.
H2 economics work if you have constant oversupply. If your electrolyzer works only 50% of the time and storing is expensive, transporting is expensive and roundtrip efficiency is abysmal, it'll still cost a ton. Higher chances to use just cheaper gas generation because even LNG is cheaper than H2 saga.
H2 economics don't work at all, and H2 is largely a fig-leaf for the fossil fuel industry.
If you were to have an environment in which H2 would actually make economic sense, non-H2 storage and distribution systems would be even cheaper, and they can be added incrementally rather than needing a big bang, preventing investing in H2 from taking off in the first place.
Not a constant oversupply because then you'd never need the hydrogen in the first place. H2 economics (if they ever work) will work in a place where there's a seasonal gradient in energy production that's over too long a time horizon for batteries.
Per lazard, currently, merely 25% green H2 peakers would provide power for as expensive as worst nuclear project in US- Vogtle. So a mere 1/4 mix is as bad as a terribly mismanaged construction project. H2 economics for electricity are non existent. It will be used fo other sectors maybe, like fertilizers
Look, I don't really want to be in the position of defending H2 here as I'm not particularly confident or optimistic about it, but I'm not really currently seeing a better alternative for seasonal energy shifting.
If Germany was willing to build new nuclear power plants I'd be potentially in favour, but it's not going to to happen, so H2 will likely be the way, and it won't be cheap.
That said, I also invite you to go look at cost estimates for batteries from just 5 years ago and compare them to today, or solar / wind cost estimates from 15 years ago. Those technologies have experienced significant reductions in cost due to scale and industrial learning.
IMO the biggest problem with H2 is that similar sorts of learning / scaling processes simply won't even start until the grid evolves to a point where the seasonal demand shifting is actually required, but by then it's essentially too late. And there's not really any hope of governments kickstarting the learning process with artificial demand because people will make all sorts convincing arguments for why it's a stupid waste.
So I guess we'll see what happens. Perhaps stuff like fertilizer and steel will help the technology matures before the grid needs it, or perhaps battery technology will surprise us again, or someone will figure out how to make flow batteries work or whatever. I'm not particularly confident in any of these technologies, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens I guess.
Something *does* need to be done about storage though, even with all the complementary wind-solar and giant Lithium or Sodium battery installations, and all the HVDC you could want.
Refurb costs are for the entire fleet which is 50+GW and are in fact dirt cheap. Refurbs are in 1-3bn/unit range. CF of say solar in this region is roughly 10-12%. To have same average output as a single 1GW npp you would need about 10GW solar and much more if you want to achieve firm generation. French refurbs will happen anyway. In fact, carenage is already undergoing.
You need to read precisely what's happening. Ontario wants to front finance all refurbs and SMRs instead of spreading the financing over years like it's usually done.
BWRX is expensive for sure. It'll cost more per GW than the failed french FLA3 or Vogtle. To me this seems a mistake considering Canada had Candus, an own authentic design that doesn't rely on enriched fuel and they did some very serious refurbs recently on time and on budget. On the other hand, bwrx is american tech and needs enriched fuel and SMRs will always have worse economics than large units, there's a reason humanity scales everything up, be it nuclear, be it wind turbines or solar fields
Again. Refurbs are extremely cheap. At 1-3bn/unit you get 1GW of firm power. That would be vastly cheaper vs deploying say solar, that would have the same TWh/y averaged even with China's costs. And this doesn't even account for firming.
Heck, even Barakah built as new by Korea is competitive vs renewables in the west. And it's understandable considering they spent per unit 1/3 of what FLA3 did cost... In under half of the time
The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt
> The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt
I assumed it was, like the UK, because it let them avoid committing to a specific price like all the other competing technologies so they could raise the price later once the project was too far along to cancel.
Maybe for smr, but for refurbs it doesn't make sense - all recent refurbs were either on time or ahead of planned timeline and on budget. Heck, even if refurbs would suddenly triple in price it would still be dort cheap vs any alternative for 1GW of firm power.
And they kinda committed to a price with Hitachi, that's why we can say it'll be worse even than recent failed big projects.
UK has other problems to tackle, mostly heavy overregulation. UK's HPC and french FLA3 are very different in many aspects, ranging from more concrete &steel use, up to a parallel analog system on top of a parallel digital system because UK regulation is 'special'. Maybe things will change, we'll see
To me this front financing looks like a cash grab from political entities since nobody guarantees money will be used in this direction, especially with current Ontario's 'governor', that dude is local trump equivalent but maybe a bit more tempered. Another possible reason is political - this frontload means project can't be easily cancelled if relationship with US gets even worse, since Hitachi GE is an US company. So who knows. Either way, IMO bwrx decision wasn't smart and front loading isn't smart too. But this has nothing to do with refurbs cost which are dirt cheap
I know about it, affected components were replaced. They still built it relatively on time and on budget
"On 7 February 2014, the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission declared that its investigation since mid-2013, they found eight cases out of 2,075 samples of foreign manufactured reactor components that were supplied with fake documents."
Nope. 7 years late (plan: 2017, last reactor diverged in 2024).
Total cost not known, at least 24.5 billion USD and maybe up to 32 according to Bloomberg (plan: 20). Koreans are even fighting: KHNP (a subsidiary of KEPCO, the company building the plant) officially seeks for about 1.2 billion USD in compensation ( https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=... ) and it may worsen up.
Nuclear was cheapest firm power in the german merit order. So yes, nuclear does have an impact, especially if it outplaces higher cost units
There is a lot of opposition because zone split would mean erasing southern industry and I may be wrong, but southern regions are pumping most of the money into state budget. Cutting those means cutting own legs.
this is not moronic. This is done everywhere in the world.
In fact, merit order does justify more ren deployment even if economics aren't that great, because operators will be paid according to merit order, needing less cfd's. You can also check out how much of the gas electricity price is just carbon tax. And how transmission spending evolved. And how CFD's for different tech evolved in each AR round
even accounting for fukushima/chernoble nuclear is between solar and wind in terms of human deaths. And new units are safer than both. EPR went 'just add one more thing' to be more expensive, AP1000 went passive safety way but westinghose imploded and they needed to ask Korea for help
An accident spreading hazardous substances over a large geographical area that are difficult to contain (or waste of this type) is unique to nuclear power; no renewable energy source poses such a threat.
Another problem is the urgency (due to the impacts) combined with the difficulty of modifying power plants as required by "lessons learned," in other words, bug fixes. Modifying or repairing solar panels or wind turbines is easier than working on a reactor and results in a smaller reduction in the plant's output. The effects of this are significant.
The number of victims (and more generally, the health impacts) of nuclear power depends on the method of analysis, which is controversial. This is true for Chernobyl and Fukushima, where the evacuation triggered by the nuclear accident officially caused 2,202 deaths (2019 count), and 2,313 according to the International Nuclear Association.
Even the maximum potential impact of an accident is debated.
The full impact of nuclear power will at best only be known after all dismantling is complete and the last cold waste is disposed of (before this deadline any mishap or stray waste can be costly), in a few thousand years.
renewables are still made from different substances, one of which is copper. One byproduct of copper is extremely toxic- arsenic, and it's spills are not that different in terms of dangers. That's the point. For nuclear at least, over time decay happens, esp for most dangerous isotopes, but for chemical waste - it's forever.
Nuclear still has higher capacity factor than any VRE.
Evacuation numbers for Fukushima are accounted in the stat. But it's also worth mentioning Japanese govt acknowledged most of the deaths are caused by extreme evacuation measures that werent needed, but govt ignored the data it had to enforce them. The panic against nuclear caused them, not radiation.
Arsenic: this only plays during mining (recycling is OK), and efficient measures are already in place (where and when was it a problem, and at which extent?)
> capacity factor
So what? Capacity factor (or another similar quantity such as physical efficiency, operating life, etc.) is a salient criterion in the case of equipment consuming materials or fuel without recycling them, or producing waste in quantity or in the long term that is dangerous... therefore does not concern nuclear power but hardly concerns renewables.
A low yield makes deployment more expensive but, considered alone, is not prohibitive: a mix of renewables producing adequately (quantity, permanence, impacts, total cost including recycling, etc.) is a good solution whatever its yield.
> most of the deaths are caused by extreme evacuation measures that werent needed
This is disputed and the real amplitude of the threat was not known during the nuclear accident. The tiny evacuation ordered was minimally cautious as experts predicted, during the accident, that the worst cast would imply evacuating up to 50 millions persons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoto_Kan#In_media
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