[Graeme]

Regulatory Reform and Financial Aid – Germany on Growing Tunisia’s Renewable Energy Sector

In two recent articles on the topic of sustainable development and solar energy in Tunisia, Nawaat made reference to the Desertec Industrial Initiative, also known as Dii EUMENA. The pursuit of information pertaining to Dii and renewable energies in Tunisia is a veritable jumping down the rabbit hole as the network of local and foreign institutions, initiatives, and developments is suprisingly dynamic, vast, and growing. What becomes apparent is the extent to which Dii—a German limited liability (GmbH) company, and GIZ, which operates under the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, are invested in the development of Tunisia’s renewable energies, not only in terms of their involvement in production projects (which have gained a fair amount of public visibility in the media), but also in advocating for the revision of legal frameworks governing the production of solar and wind energies and the nature of associated foreign investment and partnerships.

I Desertec Industrial Initiative – Dii EUMENA

Dii’s mission is to pave the way for a market for solar and wind power from the deserts for local consumption in North Africa and the Middle East (MENA) and, eventually, for export to Europe. The aim is to reach an energy mix of highest security of delivery, mainly based on lowest cost renewable electricity throughout the interconnected markets in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (EUMENA). Dii acts as a market and project enabler that builds partnerships throughout this region. As an expert, facilitator and catalyst, the industrial initiative gives guidance on the integration of desert power into the common market e.g. by highlighting the required political, regulatory, financial, (socio-)economic and technological conditions. Dii is not an investor itself, nor will it develop projects itself. Rather it helps the market to recognize and develop feasible projects.
Our Mission, Dii Mission & Vision webpage

On November 15, 2011, Dii announced Dii and STEG Energies Renouvelables Sign Memorandum of Understanding for a Joint Pre-feasibility Study of Renewable Energy Projects in Tunisia. Signed on the occasion of the International Conference on the Tunisian Solar Plan, the agreement promoted large-scale solar and wind power projects for domestic consumption and export to Europe; To this end, Dii and the Tunisian Company of Electricity and Gas, or STEG, committed to elaborate a legal framework for a «first reference project» and to develop market capacity for enhanced energy production.

Amidst evidence of impressive large-scale project developments indicated by Desertec and Nur Energie in the TuNur Ltd. project, Dii’s recent publication of a Regulatory Overview for Tunisia would seem a fitting and timely report on the «legal framework applicable to renewable energy projects» in measure with the Memorandum of Understanding. The concise ten-page study includes six charts—Regulatory Assessment, Regulatory Improvements, Renewable Energy Policy, Business Models, Transmission and Access to the Grid, Foreign Investment Protection—that offer a succinct but thorough outline of the Regulation and Policy (page 10 of the report) reviewed by the author.

nawaat

[Graeme]

Can Africa’s desert sun power Europe?

Up to 20% of power demand in Europe can be obtained by connecting African deserts to European cities, according to the DESERTEC Foundation. The idea is to build a large number of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) countries, and to transmit electricity to Europe by means of efficient high-voltage direct-current cables. CSP in deserts, as explained in greater detail below, has the potential to generate renewable electricity, predictably, for up to 16 hours per day, thus overcoming two major problems with photovoltaic and wind power: intermittency and few operation hours.

A prominent technology roadmap of the International Energy Agency published in 2010 had optimistic prospects for CSP, and projected a significant amount of electricity transmission from MENA countries to Europe – up to 15% of total electricity consumption in 2050 (see IEA 2010).


The DESERTEC project has lost traction since Siemens withdrew from the partnership in October 2012, but the idea of building a trans-Mediterranean power grid is still attractive for many proponents of a quick transition towards a zero-emission European power system.

The main questions we address in this column are the following:

Is it economically, technologically and politically feasible to cover a large fraction of power demand in Europe from the MENA deserts?
We answer these questions by relying on numerical scenarios generated using the integrated assessment model WITCH to study when, how much and where it is optimal to invest in CSP, and what the potential size of an EU–MENA power market is (Massetti and Ricci 2013). We find that it is premature for Europe to invest now in large CSP projects. There is scope for pilot projects, but large economic benefits from trans-Mediterranean CSP trade emerge only from 2050 onward. However, the threats to European energy security from extensive trade in electricity with MENA countries should not be underestimated.

solar.org

[Graeme]

Desertec solar power project shareholders jump ship

An ambitious project to harness and export solar power generated in Middle East and African deserts has all but folded after the withdrawal of most of the Desertec Industrial Initiative’s shareholders.

The multi-billion renewable energy project, founded in Germany to much fanfare five years ago, aimed to help to provide up to 15% of Europe’s power from solar and wind parks in North Africa and the Middle East by 2050.

Desertec said on Tuesday that following a meeting in Rome this week only three of its 19 existing shareholders had decided to stay on board: Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power IPO-ACWA.SE, Germany’s RWE and China’s State Grid.

They have decided to continue the project in an “adapted format“, Desertec said, adding that it would now function as a service company in the Middle East and North Africa.

Former shareholders include Germany’s Deutsche Bank , reinsurer Munich Re and Swiss conglomerate ABB.

“Costs were very high and some companies said we’re not that interested in the Middle East and North Africa,” Desertec Chief Executive Paul van Son told journalists, trying to explain why so many shareholders had left.

theguardian

[Tanada]

Germany breaks green energy record by generating 35% of power from renewables in first half of 2017 – The Independent, July 2017

Germany breaks a solar record – gets 85% of electricity from renewables – Clean Technica, May 2017

Germany just got almost all its power from renewable energy – Bloomberg, May 2016

I haven’t been to Germany in 20 years, and it sounds like I wouldn’t recognize it. According to a first hand report from a large, bald, German acquaintance who sometimes cycles there, the country is covered in solar panels – alongside autobahns, on all sorts of rooftops, and pretty much on anything that grinds to a halt for long enough. It’s the new moss. It’s a massive effort, and creates substantial adulation among those who believe this is what success looks like.

It also creates waves of imbecilic headlines, such as those above. Show these to the average consumer, as I tried 5 minutes ago (I just happened to have one handy), and the response is most likely to have a common thread: Wow, looks like Germany has kicked the fossil fuel habit. Good for them.

That average response used to drive me crazy, and I’d pull my hair out in frustration. Now however there’s none of that, largely because I’ve cut my hair very short, and because I now have two canned responses. The first is a simple hypothetical question, and the second is a beautiful picture that is worth a million words.

First the question: If you drink 40 gallons of water today, does that mean you can do without for the next six months because you’re adequately hydrated?

Of course that’s a ridiculous question, but it does a fine job of illustrating a point: What matters is getting the right quantity at the right time, when storage is not an option. Your pantry can store enough flour for you for a year, but your stomach can’t. This concept eludes most people, especially those that write the headlines above. We don’t need heaters on a hot day when the sun is shining. It doesn’t matter if they are solar powered; we can’t store that heat until it gets cold out. And we can’t effectively store power either.

At this point, someone will chime in about Tesla’s Australian battery project; however this is only slightly more than a showboating exercise. The huge and expensive battery pack is made to sound like a solution to a region’s energy shortages; in reality it would run out before a movie is over. South Australia’s grid sees summertime peaks of over 3,000 megawatts. Assuming these batteries are most useful at peak times, duh, the Tesla batteries would provide 1/30th of the grid’s requirement for a maximum of 80 minutes. Definitely a help, but it comes right back to the same problem Germany has – power supplies need to reliably be able to meet peak demand for sustained periods.

Because we can’t store power in any sort of quantity, we need to build power plants that can provide all the power a country needs, because there will be times when the intermittent sources – wind and solar, primarily – contribute nothing.

What really drives the point home is a picture – a picture of how much power Germany consumes, including short-term fluctuations, and how much it produces by various sources. Here is an example for a week:

And here is an example for a year:

See the cute little yellow blobs? That’s solar’s contribution.

The stupid headlines would be the last thing on editors’ minds if they actually looked at these pictures before writing them, but that’s not how the world works. A statistic like “Germany gets 85% from renewables” gets eyeballs, and for a fleeting moment that statistic was true. At a certain point, on a sunny summer day when demand was not huge, the combined output of renewable sources provided a sizeable chunk of the nation’s power.

All that tells you though is that, during those brief periods, the other (fossil fuel) sources did not have to contribute as much. So there was indeed a cost saving over those intervals as coal and natural gas plants were throttled back.

But that’s the only benefit. The non-renewable system still needs to be able to meet every watt of the country’s needs at any time, for instances when the wind and sun are not contributing. The gap between total renewable contributions at their lowest point and consumption at that time are what we need to focus on, because that is the demand for fossil fuels, and it happens every single day.

This of course does not mean that the renewable sources aren’t helpful and admirable. For the periods when they contribute substantially, short term demand (as in several hours worth) for coal or other fossil fuels is reduced substantially. There is a benefit in that, albeit a modest one.

Also, it is indisputable that renewables are the wave of the future, and when a proper electrical storage system is discovered and becomes widespread those sources will be far more useful. But for now, without a means to store the generated power, they are not.

In the meantime, those ridiculous headlines are creating enormous damage. The aforementioned average citizen who reads that crap – and most news information comes from headlines; that stream alone is enough to occupy one’s day without reading articles – is now prone to believe that a country like Germany can nearly get by on solar and wind energy.

There is a direct link between these bits of disinformation and well meaning but misinformed masses who subsequently think we are nearly off fossil fuels. It’s an easy connection, based on the garbage they are being fed: Germany is an industrial powerhouse; Germany can kick the fossil fuel habit as proved by these headlines; if they can do it that quickly then others are likely to as well. And thanks to other ridiculous headlines from well-pedigreed ‘scientists’ some may now believe that no one will be driving gasoline powered cars in 10 years. Obviously then, it’s game over for fossil fuels.

Hmm, about that…oil demand rose by an estimated 1.6 million barrels per day this year, and is expected to increase by almost the same next, to about 100 million b/d. And at the recent Dubai air show, orders for new passenger jets totalled $114 billion because of strong forecast global demand. Green is great, as long as I can fly wherever I want whenever I want.

But where’s the fun in those headlines?

LINK

[KaiserJeep]

Excellant, Tanada. The only thing I would add is that Germany's "Green Dream" is largely being powered by steam power plants that have multi-fuel capability. About the only fuel thay could not use is uranium and other fissionables, because they in fact can burn anything from natural gas to pulverized coal dust, but they do NOT have fission reactors nearby, nor containment structures.

The biggest corrupt statistic concealed by the above charts is that when one denudes Canada's Northwoods of trees and burns the wood chips in European power plants, the result is niether green nor carbon neutral.

[Subjectivist]

Excellant, Tanada. The only thing I would add is that Germany's "Green Dream" is largely being powered by steam power plants that have multi-fuel capability. About the only fuel thay could not use is uranium and other fissionables, because they in fact can burn anything from natural gas to pulverized coal dust, but they do NOT have fission reactors nearby, nor containment structures.

The biggest corrupt statistic concealed by the above charts is that when one denudes Canada's Northwoods of trees and burns the wood chips in European power plants, the result is niether green nor carbon neutral.

Sure technically they have multi fuel capability, but the majority fuel they consume is lignite, the wettest and softest version of coal that exists.

The whole scheme is much more promise than practice, if you know what I mean.

[AdamB]

Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues have written yet another paper purporting to show that 100 percent of energy demand can be fulfilled by wind, solar, and hydroelectric generation. This latest study, which comes in the form of a manuscript accepted but not yet published by the journal Renewable Energy, seeks to show how that goal can be met in 139 nations. Jacobson’s previous “100 percent renewable” papers have prompted other researchers to publish their own studies pointing out faulty technical assumptions and analyses that cast a shadow over his claims. I expect that we will see technical critiques of Jacobson’s latest study as well published in coming weeks or months (if, that is, there are experts out there who are willing to risk being sued by Jacobson for questioning his results. He’s got one such sketchy lawsuit in the

Cornucopian Renewable-Energy Claims Leave Poor Nations in the Dark

[EdwinSm]

I am glad that he was ignored!

A major North Sea wind power development off Aberdeen which was opposed by Donald Trump has generated its first power.

A total of 11 turbines make up the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC).

Power from the wind farm, developed by Swedish energy group Vattenfall, is being exported to the National Grid.

Mr Trump battled unsuccessfully in the courts to halt the project before he became US president.

He said they would spoil the view from his Aberdeenshire golf course at Menie.

The 11 turbines are the most powerful in the world with a total generating capacity of 93.2 MW.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-44681278

ps. I am glad that the electricity supply firm that I have a contract with is developing renewable energy (although this development is too far from where I live). My current contract is for electricity from 100% fossil free sources.

[Plantagenet]

Mr Trump battled unsuccessfully in the courts to halt the project before he became US president.

He said they would spoil the view from his Aberdeenshire golf course at Menie.

Same thing with the Kennedys here in the US, except they were powerful enough to actually stop an offshore wind farm from being built off Cape Cod in Massachusetts because they said it would spoil the view from their family estate.

kennedys-kochs-help-kill-planned-wind-farm-off-cape-cod

The Kennedys put together a weird coalition of environmental and anti-greenhouse warming people---they even teamed up with the Koch family to stop the wind farm.

Cheers!

[Outcast_Searcher]

The Kennedys put together a weird coalition of environmental and anti-greenhouse warming people---they even teamed up with the Koch family to stop the wind farm.

Cheers!

Shhhhhhhhhh! Liberals get very frownie faced when they're whining about evil anti-green right wingers, and you point out how hypocritical so many supposedly green left wingers are -- as soon as being green involves just a bit of personal inconvenience.

You might "trigger" them or make them retreat to a safe space. The PC police will be all over you!!

[ROCKMAN]

"Don't want to be fishing next to dangerous steel cement pylons." And we have one more silly misconception. Some of the best fishing (sport and commercial) in the Gulf of Mexico is around the thousands of "steel cement pylons" of our offshore production platforms. They serve as artificial reefs which add greatly to the food chain.

Very easy to search for such FACTS on the web. If one bothers to educate themselves.

[KaiserJeep]

The anti-Cape Wind sentiments were almost exclusively from the "Summer people" as the locals refer to them. Many potential Middle Class jobs were lost when Cape Wind folded. In truth, the fishery has been in decine for decades, as local fishing backed off in deference to decining stocks of fish, the Japanese, Norwegians, and Icelanders replaced local trawlers.

In spite of those strong prevailing winds, air quality slowly worsens. The concentration of coal power plants in proximity to people on the overpopulated East Coast has no equal anywhere else in the USA. The bulk of the 12,000 annual casualties in the USA from coal effluents occur in this area.

[KaiserJeep]

Pete, the cynicism is pretty deep. I don't know what the underlying cause is, but I believe you are an intelligent man, who can solve his own problems.

If a woman caused your funk, find another one. If the legalization depressed the local economy, find a different source of income. If it's a health issue, make a lifestyle change. If you are drinking too much, change your diet.

You are in charge of your own life, and the rest of us miss the contributions you used to make here. (In addition to the mockery, because it made listening to the mockery worthwhile.)

[Tanada]

Why would any European care any more about what an American politician thought than Americans care about what EU politicians think? There are reasons my ancestors departed other continents to live in North America, and Politics are chief among them.

[Ibon]

Why would any European care any more about what an American politician thought than Americans care about what EU politicians think? There are reasons my ancestors departed other continents to live in North America, and Politics are chief among them.

History is funny. I was on a plane from the USA to Asia about 15 years ago and sat next to a Vietnamese lady. She came to the USA after the Vietnam war as a refugee. She was going back to Vietnam to live permanently. She told me she could not afford to live any longer in the USA on her social security. When she left Vietnam in the early 70's she had a sister who remained in Vietnam. At the time it was a tragedy that she couldn't make it out. Ironically, 50 years later this sister who stayed in Vietnam was paying for her sister to fly back from the US to Vietnam. This sister owns a chain of jewelry stores in Vietnam and benefited from the economic recovery and became wealthy.


15 years ago I told this story to dozens of friends, I probably posted about this somewhere here on po.com. Back then the irony of the sister who stayed in Vietnam now paying for the sister who fled to the USA to come back home seemed so poignant.

Today this story no longer raises an eyebrow.

[Outcast_Searcher]

History is funny. I was on a plane from the USA to Asia about 15 years ago and sat next to a Vietnamese lady. She came to the USA after the Vietnam war as a refugee. She was going back to Vietnam to live permanently. She told me she could not afford to live any longer in the USA on her social security. When she left Vietnam in the early 70's she had a sister who remained in Vietnam. At the time it was a tragedy that she couldn't make it out. Ironically, 50 years later this sister who stayed in Vietnam was paying for her sister to fly back from the US to Vietnam. This sister owns a chain of jewelry stores in Vietnam and benefited from the economic recovery and became wealthy.

So in your world, anecdotal data trumps overall statistics? You say NOTHING about how much the refugee worked, earned, or the amount of her SS, BTW. You say NOTHING about where she lived or how she lived. You say NOTHING about whether she meaningfully prepared for retirement. You say NOTHING about what her decisions re where and how she lives NOW impacts the "affordability" of her retirement. So even your single anecdotal comment is pretty MEANINGLESS, re actual economic content to be evaluated.

Meanwhile, in the real world of objective data, US GDP per capita is $53,240 in 2020, per tradingeconomics.com. The same reliable site has it as $2082 for Vietnam's GDP per capita in 2020.

That's about 3.9% of US GDP per capita, for Vietnam. Nothing against Vietnam at all, but let's not pretend they're wildly richer than the US, overall, while we're spinning yarns.

Except for whining liberals, anyone capable of reading and thinking knows that Social Security was NEVER meant to be 100% of retirement income. That has been the consistent message since at least the 70's, when I first noticed as a teenager.

...

Or are you now going to claim the TYPICAL Vietnam resident owns a chain of stores and that the Vietnam GDP per capita is actually, say 100 times higher than it is? Based on some perma-doomer blog or equally credible data source?

When an anecdote without ANY context trumps objective reality, be sure and get back to us. When bad economic decisions made by ONE individual mean economic conditions overall are terrible in one country vs. another, when that country has OVER 25 TIMES the GDP per capita of the other supposedly prosperous country, be sure an get back to us.

And BTW, you can make all the random "back in the day" claims you want, but there has ALWAYS been quite a bit of poverty in America, just like there have certainly been plenty of rich people here and there, all over the world. Asia is a BIG place. It has LOTS and LOTS of very rich people.

[Tanada]

Nuclear energy is cheap

The argument is well known: nuclear energy is ‘expensive’. People making this argument often point to the falling prices of wind farms or solar farms to demonstrate this. Let’s tackle this argument once and for all. Nuclear energy is dirt cheap, if we want to.
Subsidies versus loans

First off, we refer to this report from the European Commission from October 2020. This report examines the subsidies that have been used in the context of energy policy since 2008. On page 16 of the PDF (page 13 of the document) we come across this overview:


RES stands for ‘renewable energy sources’. What is immediately noticeable is how much has gone into this. Added together, the period 2008-2018 amounts to €612 billion. The increase in the most recent years suggests that it has only increased further since 2018. Let’s cautiously extrapolate from this that in 2022 we will have put in €800 billion in subsidies. Incidentally, the €3 billion per year in subsidy for nuclear energy was mainly in the light of the phasing out of this sector, according to the report (page 15).

A subsidy in itself is not inherently good or bad. As a society, you make an investment in the hope that certain developments will follow. In this case, the hope was for a strong renewable energy sector. So what are the results?

In 2020, renewable energy accounted for 38.8% of electricity consumption, or 17.4% of primary energy. The latter is all the energy that we consume. Included in this are also heat sources that we use in industry, but think also of district heating systems which are currently mainly powered by fossil fuels. For nuclear energy, those figures are 24.6% and 12.7% respectively.

Fine, now let’s look at nuclear energy. Hinkley Point C is an example of a modern EPR power station, consisting of two reactors of 1600 MWe, construction of which has now been greatly delayed and (partly because of this) the costs have risen to approximately €30 billion, or €15 billion per reactor. This seems like a lot, but it isn’t.

For a broader background, we would like to refer to this article on replanet.nl, but for now we’ll deal with this cost breakdown, which is explained in more detail in the article.


As you can see, ⅔ of the price consists of interest. This is because HPC is built with private loans, which are therefore interest-bearing. This is a fundamental difference compared to subsidies, which do not have this. Incidentally, this interest is not necessarily a big problem. For example, the money for HPC comes from British pension funds, so the money remains within British society and is only ‘pumped around’ on a macroeconomic scale.

Let’s do a short calculation, let’s pretend that those €800 billion in subsidies were spent on developing nuclear energy. Let us further assume that these subsidies would cover 100% of the costs (this is not the case with renewable energy, by the way, but we simplify the picture for now). How far do we get?

The costs per reactor now fall to €5 billion each. After all, the interest is gone. Incidentally, it is plausible that with such numbers the costs per reactor will decrease, due to more efficient construction through more experience and large-scale purchasing of materials. So let’s assume €4 billion each. So for €800 billion we will build 200 modern EPR reactors. How much does this get us?

In 2020, the EU produced nearly 2800TWh of electricity. One EPR produces about 12.5TWh of electricity per year (after all: 1600MWe x 24 hours x 365 days x 90% capacity factor). So 200 EPR reactors yield … 2500 TWh! That is 89% of the electricity production that is suddenly fossil-free! This is 2.3 times more successful than the yield in renewable energy has been so far.

If we use this in a smart way, we can also extract the same amount of energy from these reactors in heat and, for example, use it for district heating, a concept that is already being used in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In Finland there are plans to even transport this heat over a distance of 80 kilometers. As a whole, the EU uses about 9350 PJ, or 2600 TWh, of heating energy.

That is, collectively, ~5000 TWh of a total of 6700 TWh of primary energy that was produced in 2020. So, about 75% of all our energy comes from nuclear energy in this thought experiment. A whole lot better than the 17.4% that renewable energy achieves. So, why is nuclear energy expensive again?

Now there is a caveat to this. Unlike installing solar panels, which is low-skilled and poorly paid work, building nuclear power plants requires a highly skilled workforce. Following the example of HPC, 22,000 people are on the project, 6,300 of whom are on the construction site itself. Say that for a larger project, due to overlap in the suppliers, fewer people are needed per reactor, and let’s assume that this number is 15,000. If we then want to build 200 reactors in a period of 20 years, we will have to start on 10 new reactors every year. With an average construction time of ten years, you will have 1.5 million people at work at the peak. It is an open question whether we can actually achieve this at a European level.

Unlike the 1970s and 1980s, when France was fully engaged in implementing the Messmer plan, Europe has been firmly deindustrialized. A lot of industry has left for China and other Asian countries. This led to seeing a shift since the 1990s in education towards a ‘knowledge economy’. The result was, among other things, that higher education was made more expensive, and things such as a debt system were introduced in the Netherlands in order to ‘adjust’ (reduce) the number of higher educated people. It is very likely that such a project also involves a substantial investment in education that should be made available cheaply or for free. Of course, this also costs time and money, but I do think that this will benefit us as a society anyway, far beyond the immediate need for new nuclear power stations.
LCOE

A frequently heard argument is that sun and wind are simply very cheap, see for example this recent piece in The Guardian, if you look at the LCOE. This has fallen sharply in recent years. Ergo, nuclear energy can never keep up with this, right?

What exactly is LCOE? It stands for Levelized Costs of Energy (or Electricity, depending on the source) and the idea is simple and elegant: you build a power plant and divide its costs by the number of years it has been active. You then express this in MWh or kWh.

There are a number of agencies that calculate an LCOE, but Lazard is a leader in the field. Lazard is an investment bank and publishes figures on these costs every year. This is also an important hint to the problem with LCOE: after all, what is included in this overview?

For solar and wind energy, LCOE only appears to be about financing a solar or wind farm. The extra infrastructure needed to enable decentralized forms of energy? Not relevant to the LCOE.

Now solar and wind energy are also inherently intermittent, as can be clearly seen in the graph below (made by economist Edgardo Sepulveda).



The red peaks indicate the times when the sun was shining and providing energy. The blue is nuclear energy. Overview for the Canadian province of Ontario in 2021.


This is the same overview for wind energy.

Security of supply is therefore not a strong point for solar and wind energy, the two most important forms of renewable energy. However, our society relies on 24/7 security of supply. After all, we don’t say that a train only leaves when the wind blows hard enough, and you also prefer not to lie on the operating table when the lights go out or something because the sun isn’t shining…

So solar and wind have a problem. This can be solved in two ways:

As it is solved right now, by having a backstop with natural gas plants. This is cheap and fast, but of course it spews a lot of CO2 into the air. We want to get rid of this in due course. ‘In due course’ here, however, is at least a few decades.
The second solution is energy storage in the order of magnitude of TWh. This order of magnitude does not yet exist. Energy storage in dams is still the largest form of this, but is geographically limited. In the Netherlands, for example, this will not be possible. Then there are batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries. These are especially very expensive.

How expensive? Look again at the graph of LCOE, and then at the part ‘storage’. Lazard is really a lot less positive about this:



The LCOE for solar and wind energy is therefore very low, but with the mandatory storage it suddenly becomes significantly more expensive than Lazard’s LCOE for nuclear energy.

So LCOE is only really interesting if you’re a capital investor, say a customer that Lazard would be happy with, but as a taxpayer and private consumer it’s a pretty meaningless figure. Its consistent use in discussions to ‘prove’ that solar and wind energy are extremely cheap is so far from the truth that I would call it a lie.
Towards a price per kWh

Let’s make our own estimate based on the aforementioned prices that were mentioned for HPC, which are €113 per MWh:

€73 for the interest
€17 for construction
€11 for management and maintenance
€7 for the fuel
€3 for the decommissioning fund
€2 for the waste fund

This is, of course, €0.11 per kWh. If we let the interest expire, as in our earlier example, we arrive at 4 cents per kWh. And this for one of the most expensive nuclear power plants ever!

So is nuclear energy expensive? No, it is actually extremely cheap. The only thing that is really expensive is the construction of the reactor, but a modern reactor lasts 100 years. Furthermore, the fuel is so energy-dense that it represses all other costs. We only make nuclear energy expensive, artificially, and we don’t have to if we choose to.

LINK

[cephalotus]

the great cheap nuclear energy is the reason why France paid 600€/MWh for day ahead yesterday.

Most of all European countries face very high electricity prices because the "cheap" French nukes simply do not work. Very nice.

[Tanada]

the great cheap nuclear energy is the reason why France paid 600€/MWh for day ahead yesterday.

Most of all European countries face very high electricity prices because the "cheap" French nukes simply do not work. Very nice.

Pure BS, France delayed maintenance on their entire nuclear fleet while the COVID idiocy was going on so right now half their reactors are at zero or reduced power while the workers catch up that delayed work. Cherry picking a spot in time is pretty poor style for argumentation. You sound just like the climate deniers.

[Doly]

Pure BS, France delayed maintenance on their entire nuclear fleet while the COVID idiocy was going on so right now half their reactors are at zero or reduced power while the workers catch up that delayed work. Cherry picking a spot in time is pretty poor style for argumentation.

That may be a bit of cherry-picking, but nuclear power hasn't been cheap, in France or anywhere else, for at least three decades.