French presidential election - a primer | 110 comments (110 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 7)

Germany's Renewable Output Beats Nuclear, Hard Coal in Power Mix
Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Germany produced more energy from renewable sources than from nuclear, hard-coal or gas-fired plants this year after boosting investments in projects from wind to biomass.
Renewables accounted for a fifth of the generation mix in 2011, up from 16.4 percent last year, the BDEW utility association said today in a website statement. Only lignite- fired output, with 24.6 percent, had a greater share this year.
Atomic power sank to 17.4 percent from 22.4 percent after Chancellor Angela Merkel shuttered the country's eight oldest reactors in March in the wake of the Fukushima crisis in Japan. She plans a complete exit from the nuclear industry by 2022.

I tend to agree with you that Germany should have focused on eliminating coal before nuclear, but at least most of the change is happening through the increase in the share of renewables rather than fossil-fuel plants. and that's before the large scale investment in offshore wind shows up in the numbers.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 04:38:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 5)

The numbers of AG Energiebilanzen e.V. are also interesting. In their preliminary report on primary energy use in 2011, they say hard coal use fell 0.7%, which masks a 2% drop of coal consuption of power plants and a 4% rise of use in the steel industry. 'Brown coal' (in German terminology, low-grade bituminous or high-grade sub-bituminous coal) however rose 4%, and this is mostly power plant related. Gas use fell 10%, but most of that is explained with lower use for heating due to mild weather. As for renewables, an overall 4.1% growth masks a 9% drop for hydro and 8% drop for biofuels on one hand and 22% rise for wind, 67% rise for PV and 21% rise for biogas on the other hand. Net export fell to 5 TWh, but still positive. As for oil, use fell by 3%, to the lowest level since 1990 according to the report, but considering the mild weather, maybe the percentage drop is less spectacular. Overall CO2 emissions fell 3%. Cleaned of the weather effect, they say energy use would have dropped 1% and CO2 emissions would have risen 1%.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 06:22:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (none / 1)

Here is the original BDEW press report in German. 2011 numbers (with percentage point changes), with feed-in-law-supported renewables – overall 19.9% (+3.5) – broken up individually:

'brown coal' 24.6% (+1.4)
hard coal 18.7% (+0.1)
nuclear 17.7% (-4.7)
gas 13.6% (-0.2)
wind 7.6% (+1.6)
biomass 5.2% (+0.8)
pumped storage, home waste & other outside the feed-in-law 4.2% (-0.1)
PV 3.2% (+1.3)
hydro 3.1% (-0.2)
waste-burning 0.8% (no change)

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 06:36:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 3)

That is far too charitable reading of german energy policy. From a strict point of view any phaseout of nuclear in a not 100% low carbon grid is bad, because phasing out coal instead is always an option. However, even taking a less hardline viewpoint, every bit of renewable energy added to the german grid lately was in the pipeline before the nuclear shutdown was decided on, so you cannot credit it against the loss of capacity. Merkel put the shutdown schedule into law with no replacement clean capacity added not already in the works, so it is in fact a perfect example of nuclear phaseout helping to fry the planet - every megawatthour lost from reactors is replaced by less electricity exports (consequences depends on what the former importer replaces that power with) or dirty power.

Italy: Direct substition of dirty power upon the abandonment of their nuclear programme.

Barsebeck: Replaced by fossile fuels in the short run, swedes cleaned up the shortfall via.. uprating the remaining reactors.

by Thomas on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 07:47:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 6)

Fair enough - but then we'll need to revisit the topic in 2-3 years, when all the new offshore wind farms which have been financed thanks to the KfW programme, announced after (and as part of) the phaseout, get built.

Data from this year are also skewed by the unusually warm weather, so consumption was down anyway, and there was no need for actual replacement of all the nuke capacity. Question, of course, is whether the "unusual" is so unusual...

But again, you will get no disagreement from me that coal should be phased out before nukes - but since it's harder to phase out nukes (full base load), if that can be done we'll know it's easy to do the same to coal...

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 08:41:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 4)

Thomas:

Direct substition of dirty power

how, after fukushima et al, you can still cling to a belief that nukes are clean in any way shape or form is as mysteriously wrong-headed as are your claims that PV, wind etc are delusional.

impasse? look at the economic forces pushing for more nukes, look at those like Jerome pushing for really clean solutions. which camp do you belong in?

it's not 1950, we are not fooled by the pseudo-promise of nuclear, we have a quarter of the world's nukes here in Europe already, you want more, lots more, when the ones they are building already are always astronomically over budget, there is no agreed safe way to dispose of the waste, and the sheer energy/risk needs for the next hundreds of thousands of years keeping them chilled will probably outweigh the needs people have for other things.

more new nukes to power the chilling of the old nukes.

redefines the term 'vicious cycle', what could possibly go wrong(er)?

every penny spent on nukes takes us farther away from the world we could create, where citizens can marry their needs with those of their environment.

we are already indebting our descendents economically in our insanely entitled profligacy and denial about our consumption patterns, but economic debt pales before the debt of suffering we will bequeath to them sprinkling more nukes around their landscape.

i agree with your loathing of coal, but the rest, no matter how sincerely you may feel what you do, rings as off-the-map self-destructive a strategy as building more coal plants.

i can't understand how anyone can still believe nuke propaganda, after all the lies and cover-ups, unless they are contrarian-for-its-own-sake, or have some financial investment in pushing this nightmarish technology which may present well on paper, but it should be patently obvious by now to all but the wilfully blind that we all-too-fallible humans are nowhere near the level of carefulness or responsibility to make happen right here.

the EROI is unquantifiable seeing how long these beasts take to die, and how much it costs to embalm them, so no nuke advocate should ever dare to describe this technology as economically justifiable, the data just isn't there!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 08:43:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Nukes do work (4.00 / 7)

when they are State-owned, State-financed and independently supervised - something that France, despite a few shortcomings, has managed to do.

The problem is that this model is dead - it's actually even illegal in the EU as it would amount to State aid... and let's not talk about the general weakening of regulators over the past 30 years, not in energy in particular but in general.

So today, nuclear electricity (from new plants) will cost 8c/kWh instead of the 3-4c/kWh France achieved for the past 20 years - so more than wind, with even more controversy...

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 08:48:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Nukes do work (4.00 / 6)

Maybe it's time, as Europhiles, to start opposing the ways in which the EU is pushing wrong-headed policies in many aspects?

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 08:49:32 AM EST
[ Parent ]

yes (4.00 / 8)

I've tried to do this whenever I have an opportunity to speak publicly. Last year I was invited to speak at various EU events (including one to all national regulators) and made this presentation: The financing of new energy infrastructure in the EU (as discussed here on ET).

I've been asked to contribute to the Hollande campaign on these issues and am passing on some of these ideas as well.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 08:59:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Nukes do work (none / 0)

You don't even need state financing and ownership (though it certainly doesn't hurt) as long as you have a culture of excellence and a focus of safety first. Which is quite hard to do in a deregulated power market or where nuclear is seen as a sunset technology, however.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun Jan 8th, 2012 at 08:10:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

actually you do (none / 1)

for several reasons:

nuclear is a capital intensive technology, and is thus cheaper if financed at low rates over the very long term. Nobody can beat the State to do that
nuclear does have residual risks which will always be borne by the public - safety, cleanup in case of accident (as they are uninsurable) and long term waste management. One can argue that these costs are more or less measurable, but as they are always - always - for the State, it is only fair the public should get the upside of nuclear power in the form of State ownership of the assets and/or lower prices for electricity.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sun Jan 8th, 2012 at 09:08:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: actually you do (none / 1)

true of course, and I don't disagree. But in a regulated environment, solid private power companies get cheap enough rates as well so as to finance nukes in a reasonable way. This is not a hypothesis - it is the historical experience in eg Finland and Sweden.
that argument also requires that airlines, chemical plants, hydro plants, natgas infrastructure and so on is owned by the state. Of course, the public does get the upside in the form of lower electricity prices as well, if the market is regulated. Which is more or less needed to make nuclear possible for private owners. Even if some exotic ways of financing are possible even in a deregulated market (plants owned directly by a consortium of big power consumers, Mankala model, and so on).

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sun Jan 8th, 2012 at 09:33:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 2)

I'm with you on this issue melo. Nukes (in the long term anyway) are far too risky. Just because there hasn't been a major accident so far in Europe, doesn't mean there never will be. I doubt seriously Three Mile Island, Chernobyl or Fukushima were planned events. Nobody's got a crystal ball. Who knows for sure what will happen in the future? The nuke technology certainly hasn't proved to be fail safe. And then there is the huge dilemma of where to safely store the nuclear waste produced by this type of energy, which I don't believe has been fully or satisfactorily addressed either.

The saving grace is that there are alternatives, namely wind, solar, geothermal, etc. Should it be that TPTB decide that the incentives are ripe to switch to these alternative energies and move forward full throttle, both coal and nukes could be phased out.

While there's always been known knowns and unknown knowns, it's the unknown knowns that concern me most. And the possible ramifications of nuclear power use fall squarely in the latter category imo.

by sgr2 on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 10:55:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

An example? Earth (4.00 / 2)

A civilization which produces a significant portion of its sustenance from a factory farm system which has more adverse effect on climate change than transportation or power, which produces hugely polluting unchecked waste, which produces the conditions for advanced mutations of diseases, which has to use so much antibiotics that resistant strains are becoming the norm, and which allows no effective monitoring or regulation...

is not mature enough to split the atom with respect for the entire cycle.

You are what you eat. The technocratic view of the nuclear cycle, that it's manageable, may well be true, but it is not manageable by this civilization.

Technocrats always view nuclear power in isolation, which just can't be done.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:24:14 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An example? Earth (none / 0)

Could a mod please delete this comment. it does not belong here in this French election diary.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:44:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]

leave it in (none / 1)

as nuclear energy is likely going to continue to be a real part of the election debate, this whole thread is not really so off-topic.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:46:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: leave it in (none / 0)

well, ok.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:49:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An example? Earth (4.00 / 2)

Factory farms: A perfect example of what's gone wrong and why we find ourselves in the situation we're in. But when the players/TPTB are Monsanto and the like, what else can be expected? Round-Up to the rescue. GMO seeds for everybody.

What is manageable (in a good way I mean) by this civilization? Sometimes one wonders.

by sgr2 on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 12:25:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An example? Earth (4.00 / 3)

So far TPTB have managed to refrain from turning the planet into a radioactive cinder, something I wouldn't have bet a large amount of money on in the 1960s.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

by ATinNM on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 12:39:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An example? Earth (none / 1)

When thought of from that point of view you're right, AT. And that's good news for all of us.

by sgr2 on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 01:46:33 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An example? Earth (none / 0)

I would have bet a large amount of money on that in the 1960s, had I had the option. If the planet is covered in a shallow layer of radioactive glass, then the bet is void by virtue of me, my bookie or both being dead anyway, so such a bet would be all upside.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Jan 6th, 2012 at 07:42:40 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: An exemple? Germany (4.00 / 2)

Sigh. Speaking of lies, if greenpeace tells you the sun will rise, ask for their sources.

In order: nuclear waste does not need longterm cooling. LWR waste needs short term cooling while the shortest-lived isotopes decay. Long term storage, of the kind the finns and swedes are actually building has an ongoing energy consumption of zero, being a gold(well, glass, copper and clay)-plated hole into bedrock. The energy cost of building them compared to the energy extracted from the fuel before deposition is also zero. Nuclear waste quantities are very small, and the energetic costs of blasting bedrock arent that high.
The energy cost of construction and decomissioning any given reactor are also neglible. Nuclear reactors are very expensive, but that is because they require enormous quantities of skilled manhours to build, not because they are resource hogs.

The error you are making is that it is very easy to construct a very long list of steps in the production of nuclear energy that consumes energy, and then claim that the EROI must be bad, but that is not how you do EROI. You need to run the numbers, and for nuclear fission, the numbers are very, very good, and can easily be dramatically improved by moving to more advanced fuel cycles.

As for pseudo-promises - Renewable advocates have promised a future powered by sun and wind since 1970, using the exact same retoric, the same images and the same arguments. This has given us 40 years of dominance by coal, and global warming. If the enviormental movement had backed nukes in 1970 global warming would basically not exist
The same advocacy groups are currently signing us up for thirty+ years of natural gas, fracking and earthquakes. -
You can loadbalance a wind grid with sufficient HVDC interconnections on a continental scale, or with gas turbines. Pay attention to which of those utilities are actually building....

.. BTW, can anyone explain to me why HVDC lines are not being laid more than they are? Because just looking at electricty prices in various markets, investors are passing up serious arbritage possibilities.

As for fukushima. That was a disaster beyond what I had reckoned plausible. A very expensive disaster. And the radiation killed noone. Mostly, that disaster is an argument that it is worth it to invest a heck of a lot in smaller designs with passive safeties, because heck, yes, LWR's are white elephants.

by Thomas on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:27:52 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Meh (4.00 / 5)

As usual, I follow you largely in the defense of nuclear, but not in the silly attacks on renewable that follow.

Renewable advocates have promised a future powered by sun and wind since 1970, using the exact same retoric, the same images and the same arguments. This has given us 40 years of dominance by coal, and global warming.

Renewables (along with energy efficiency and savings) were on the right path until they were killed in the 80s by the combination of the oil price collapse and the neolib revolution (remember Reagan tearing down the solar panels on the White House?). I don't think there have been a lot of coal plants built in the Western worlds in the past 25 years - but gas-fired plants have indeed been built, and they are the logical consequence of energy deregulation and investment driven by short term returns rather than long term considerations - a policy issue unrelated to renewables or their advocates.

You can loadbalance a wind grid with sufficient HVDC interconnections on a continental scale, or with gas turbines. Pay attention to which of those utilities are actually building....

Can you make the difference between a lot of gas-fired MWs, and a lot of gas-fired MWh? Balancing requires a lot of gas-fired plants but not a lot of gas to be burnt? Gas peakers are profitable with a utilization rate of 2-10%. I don't see anything wrong with having lots of little-used gas-fired power plants.

As to utilities building gas-fired plants, see my comment above about deregulation, and my various posts about how it is so much easier to be profitable with a price-making technology (high magical costs) than with a price taking technology (high fixed costs)...

BTW, can anyone explain to me why HVDC lines are not being laid more than they are? Because just looking at electricty prices in various markets, investors are passing up serious arbritage possibilities.

It's mainly a NIMBY issue, unfortunately.

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:41:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"magical cost" (none / 1)

should read "marginal cost" of course...

The wonders of OSX Lion auto-correct... maybe not so inappropriate here!

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 11:55:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Meh (none / 1)

This does need its own diary, give me a few hours. But basically: In order for wind to be a high fraction of the total kwh produced, you need either vast ability to shift electricity consumption in time, (not hours. Days, weeks) or a really large geograpical area interconnected. Without one of those - and either one will do - you end up with 2/3s of actual kwh being gas.

by Thomas on Thu Jan 5th, 2012 at 01:04:27 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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