The great debate among carbon free resources continues, on TMC.
The fact is Diablo Canyon, Fort Calhoun, Yankee, Pilgrim, Quad Cities, Clinton and SONGs are all very recent, or coming, nuclear closures to be heavily back-filled by natural gas, and coal. I think that is where the debate centers, for North Americans. New is pretty much dead here, accept for already in construction plants (2). Closing 2016 was NY's $17-38 nuke subsidy, and US (R) Senate discussions of a $35/ton sequestration tax-credit, for coal. It doesn't look like tax-credits will be threatened, as much as doled out for the fossil fuel industry. Elon, and many others talk carbon pricing, but it was practically as amusing as Trump getting elected, to see the Left shoot down CO2 pricing because of social interest groups. Ones that effectively wanted their cut of the proceeds (yes, WA). Once sorted out, lets hope a price puts the hate on CO2 instead.
It's a fun time to work in U.S. electricity. Nwdiver says wind PPA's are <$1/watt, but he isn't talking about off-shore. Just like lithium batteries, going from ~$1000 about 6 years ago, to $143/kwh in the Bolt, those ugly expensive $15 a watt wind mills, off Block Island, are poised to go down as more oil co's get heavy equipment involved. What I don't have a good financial sense of, is the recent Wall Street Journal articles marking two Dong PPA prices in Europe. The dollar equivalents were first about $80, and then another this week down in the $50's, per MWh. That includes feed in tariff, and possibly other supports that nuclear could only dream of. So, what's the true economies of scale price for off-shore going to be without subsidy or carbon pricing?
Both renewables, and keeping the nukes on, are cheap enough from a CO2 perspective that maybe we should beat the drum against natural gas build-out (and reinvigorated "clean coal") a little more? Cove point, on the Atlantic coast, is going to start shipping LNG to Asia (wha??). As a CO2 emitter, why be thrilled in the first place. Saying goodbye to ~$3/mmbtus, from higher bids abroad, is another reason US ratepayers could be left holding an under-diversified bag of new gas plants. I guess I'm making a circle, by coming back to natural gas peakers as also being partially displaced by battery storage in the not distant future. We talk $/watt and PPA quotes as benches for "who wins". The damage coming from batteries will be their limited entry into peak hours of the day, for maybe just two. The two hours that prices happen to be their highest. A very disruptive form of selective load following. Batteries don't displace nuclear, as much as they do fossil. Resources such as Diablo Canyon could have been re-licensed in 2025, and witnessed much higher capacity factors with those batteries, but instead there will be that other 50%, mostly fossil fired, pool of resources chugging when California's sun doesn't shine. It's why EPA sees sector CO2 falling only 10-20%, over 15 years. There are the multiple ways of solving the world's CO2 problems, the "blue squares" etc., and then there's policy, property rights and perception. Those last items amount to a 2 degree punch in the face, and then some.
Back to "solar's better than nuclear"...
