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The issue is we actually are sometime shutting down renewables plants, due to electricity overproduction. That is usually on weekends with great production capacity, so rarer on not much production is lost, but with nuclear we would be at that border on weekdays as well. So in five years, you propably end up shutting down something on a regular bases.
As for renewables on EU level that is France really needing a lot of low carbon electricity today, due to its aging fleet.
As for renewables on EU level that is France really needing a lot of low carbon electricity today, due to its aging fleet.
Do you really think France is in a worse position than Germany? Their electricity sector is almost carbon free, their CO2 emissions/capita are a lot lower than Germany’s and they did not build a lot of renewables so far. So, even in the worst case of having to replace all nuclear plants, they have to replace almost carbon-free electricity, using the most suitable locations for renewables in their country, since those are all still available, using current pretty low prices for renewables.
Meanwhile Germany did not even get rid of coal yet, about 50% of its electricity is still provided by fossil fuels (and a significant share of fucking coal, still), put inefficient old renewable technology in the best available spots for outlandish prices in the 2000s/2010s and now has to wait until the end of the lifespan of those old installations to put modern, cheap, efficient renewables there. If even possible, repowering old wind installations is faced with a backlash often enough.
You can look at this any way you want, the way the German Energiewende was implemented was terrible. You could argue that it helped to kickstart solar and wind, which it definitely did, but I do not think it was necessary to the extent it happened. Prices for wind and solar were already on a downward trend even way before 2000.
I don’t even put the blame fully on the Greens, who loved the goal of 100% renewables as quickly as possible and getting rid of nuclear so much they never stopped to ask about the price tag. Coal-loving SPD and conservative CDU messing up from 2005 to 2021 played a huge role as well. Really the only good thing the CDU ever did about climate policies in that timeframe was trying to extend nuclear, if you ask me. Unfortunately they botched even that.
France has to 48 npps hitting 40 years this decade or well they already have and has a single plant under construction with massive cost overruns and delays. At times half their npps were not producing power due to maintanence issues. So they had to ask other countries to turn on recently turned off coal power plants, to make up for their nuclear power plant issues. That might return this winter, as French electricity demand peaks in winter. I hope it does not happen, but France was very close to some massive blackouts last winter.
France has to 48 npps hitting 40 years this decade or well they already have and has a single plant under construction with massive cost overruns and delays.
I am aware. There are no plans to shut all of them down anytime soon, though.
The issue is we actually are sometime shutting down renewables plants, due to electricity overproduction. That is usually on weekends with great production capacity, so rarer on not much production is lost, but with nuclear we would be at that border on weekdays as well. So in five years, you propably end up shutting down something on a regular bases.
As for renewables on EU level that is France really needing a lot of low carbon electricity today, due to its aging fleet.
Do you really think France is in a worse position than Germany? Their electricity sector is almost carbon free, their CO2 emissions/capita are a lot lower than Germany’s and they did not build a lot of renewables so far. So, even in the worst case of having to replace all nuclear plants, they have to replace almost carbon-free electricity, using the most suitable locations for renewables in their country, since those are all still available, using current pretty low prices for renewables.
Meanwhile Germany did not even get rid of coal yet, about 50% of its electricity is still provided by fossil fuels (and a significant share of fucking coal, still), put inefficient old renewable technology in the best available spots for outlandish prices in the 2000s/2010s and now has to wait until the end of the lifespan of those old installations to put modern, cheap, efficient renewables there. If even possible, repowering old wind installations is faced with a backlash often enough.
You can look at this any way you want, the way the German Energiewende was implemented was terrible. You could argue that it helped to kickstart solar and wind, which it definitely did, but I do not think it was necessary to the extent it happened. Prices for wind and solar were already on a downward trend even way before 2000.
I don’t even put the blame fully on the Greens, who loved the goal of 100% renewables as quickly as possible and getting rid of nuclear so much they never stopped to ask about the price tag. Coal-loving SPD and conservative CDU messing up from 2005 to 2021 played a huge role as well. Really the only good thing the CDU ever did about climate policies in that timeframe was trying to extend nuclear, if you ask me. Unfortunately they botched even that.
France has to 48 npps hitting 40 years this decade or well they already have and has a single plant under construction with massive cost overruns and delays. At times half their npps were not producing power due to maintanence issues. So they had to ask other countries to turn on recently turned off coal power plants, to make up for their nuclear power plant issues. That might return this winter, as French electricity demand peaks in winter. I hope it does not happen, but France was very close to some massive blackouts last winter.
Also 40% fossil fuels and not 50% for Germany.
I am aware. There are no plans to shut all of them down anytime soon, though.
2022 was at 48.5% even with nuclear still running. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&source=total&interval=year&year=2022
2023 is at 46.2% so far, and I doubt it will get better during autumn and winter. https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/energy_pie/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&source=total&interval=year&year=2023
Edit: Well, Lemmy is botching the links, so here are the graphs directly, I guess:
2022:
2023: