Luciferase,
"The idea of building and maintain massive renewable infrastructure, only to have to supplement it with fossil fuels, seems plain dumb"

Does the idea of building and maintain massive nuclear infrastructure, only to have to supplement it with fossil fuels, seem plain dumb? Because most places with nuclear power do have to supplement it with fossil fuels.

If you examined it further, you'd probably find it wasn't dumb at all. For a start we already have a lot of fossil fuel infrastructure. And reliability is important.

But nuclear without what makes it safe? That's incredibly dumb, no matter how cheap it is!

Luciferase,

For once I agree with you wholeheartedly.

The greenies have yet to find a renewable alternative to coal or nuclear as a base load, and so simply try and pretend that there is no need for base load. At 7 o'clock on a windless night, Australians will be using candles if the greens have their way.

The one problem with nuclear is that the cost of fuel is negligible with the result that once nuclear is established renewables can't compete.

Aidan's comments are simply Greens' spin. He's been corrected on his many misleading, dishonest and disingenuous statements over and over again, yet keeps repeating them. He seems to be incapable of admitting when he is wrong or of retracting his wrong assertions. It is people like him who are the main cause of the ongoing delays to real progress.

."Wind power is economic if it has access to cheap finance. As indeed are solar PV and solar thermal."

How dumb a comments is that? Coal, gas, nuclear are all far cheaper than renewables if they also have cheap finance. But cheap finance has to be subsidised by somewoe. Aidan's comment is probably a copy from a comment on another site, where I already refuted it: http://euanmearns.com/el-hierro-revisited/#comment-11673

>"Does the idea of building and maintain massive nuclear infrastructure, only to have to supplement it with fossil fuels, seem plain dumb? Because most places with nuclear power do have to supplement it with fossil fuels."

What is dumb is being obstinately innumerate and dishonest. It has been explained to Aidan on many different threads and web sites that renewables cAnnot make much of a contribution to reducing global GHG emissions but nuclear can. The current and past Nuclear plants can supply over 80% of electricity (as France has been demonstrating for over three decades). At a little higher cost they could supply nearly all electricity (the argument that they cannot load follow is a furphy - as demonstrated by nuclear subs and ships). Conversely, renewables cannot. France has near the lowest cost electricity and near the lowest CO2 intensity of electricity of any EU country. Germany and Denmark with the highest proportion of non-hydro renewables have near the highest cost electricity and near highest CO2 emissions intensity in EU.

A person would have to be either stubbornly innumerate or intellectually dishonest to continually repeat the nonsense Aidan keeps repeating. He's clearly just a Greens advocate, for whom it seems intellectual honesty is irrelevant.

Hi Aidan,
1. France took their grid to 75% nuclear in under 20 years. (It was already 25% hydro). Denmark tried to deploy wind as fast. France is at 90 g CO2 / kwh, Denmark at 650 g CO2 / kwh. Who is winning this race? Also, Denmark now export much of their wind energy when it blows because it's not actually useful in Denmark *when* it blows. It is distributed across the Nordic Grid, and only forms about 8% of that grid.

2. German solar is 3 times more expensive than nuclear: and it doesn't run on a cold German winter night.
"An analysis by the Breakthrough Institute finds that the entire German solar sector produces less than half the power that Fukushima Daiichi – a single nuclear complex – generated before it was hit by the tsunami. To build a Fukushima-sized solar industry in Germany would, it estimates, cost $155bn. To build a Fukushima-sized nuclear plant would cost $53.5bn. And the power would be there on winter evenings."
http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2011/03/doing_the_math_comparing_germa.shtml

3. Storage in northern nations like Germany could bankrupt any nation that tried it. You can *either* buy Tesla Powerpack batteries to back up *one week* of winter in Germany (at a hypothetical 30% penetration of wind and solar, and these wind and solar farms must still be bought), OR you can just buy safe modern nuclear-waste eating nukes that will do the whole job for 60 years. Again, *backup* a third of a renewable grid for just one week, or nuke the whole grid for 60 years! That’s the economics of renewable storage V nuclear.
Point 2 at the link below
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/issues/renewables/the-grid-will-not-be-disrupted

Peter,

My comments are no more Greens' spin than yours are anti-Greens' spin. Nor were they copied from that site you linked to – I was only vaguely aware of that site and had not visited it since those comments were made.

Your comment "How dumb a comments is that? Coal, gas, nuclear are all far cheaper than renewables if they also have cheap finance" PROVES YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION AT ALL!

Renewables, nuclear and fossil fuels all have different cost structures. With fossil fuels the fuel cost is a large proportion of the fuel cost, and the infrastructure cost is much smaller, so cheaper finance would only result in a very slight reduction in electricity cost. For nuclear the reduction is better, but still nowhere near as good as for renewables.

I'm saying cheap finance should be subsidised by the government, as there would be a significant public benefit: cheaper electricity. (I think that puts me closer to the Lomborg position than to the standard Greens' position. So do you still think I'm just a Greens' advocate?)

The idea that renewables cannot make much of a contribution to reducing GHG emissions is as much a furphy as the idea that nuclear reactors can't load follow. They're based on truth (in nuclear's case, the major technical problem of xenon 135 buildup). But the technical obstacles are not insurmountable.

And it's hardly surprising that electricity in Germany and Denmark is so expensive when they've been funding their renewable energy infrastructure with inefficient feedin tariffs. Had they used concessional loans instead, their electricity would've been much cheaper by now.

Aidan,

You keep making baseless, ill informed comments. You continually ignore the relevant facts and divert discussions to irrelevant, down in the weed's factoids.. You do not provide support for your beliefs. You dodge and weave and avoid the issues then raise something else. You don't understand what you are talking about. It's disappointing that ill-informed people like you are delaying progress.

You didn't respond to the comment where I explained how weighted average cost of capital is calculated. You didn't say "now I understand".

Low interest rates loans from governments are subsidies. They are paid for by tax payers. They can make the chosen electricity technology cheaper, but at a net economic cost to the country. There's no free lunch Try to get your head around this really basic text: "Economics in one lesson": http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/contents.html . Let me know if you think you've learnt what's important and relevant.

Nuclear generated electricity is about 1/3 the cost of renewables when all system costs are included. But renewables cannot reach high penetration levels sustainably. Nuclear can. You also didn't say you understand the contrast between high nuclear France versus high renewables Germany and Denmark See Figure 1 here: http://euanmearns.com/green-mythology-and-the-high-price-of-european-electricity

"the city of Peterborough, ... attempts to develop solar and wind power recently came to a grinding halt. Is Peterborough’s experience a sign of things to come elsewhere in the world? http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/politics/politics-news/multi-million-pound-solar-panel-scheme-for-peterborough-faces-uncertain-future-1-6933371

It would seem so:

"Denmark’s Government Readies U-Turn on Ambitious Climate Targets" http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-01/denmark-s-government-readies-u-turn-on-ambitious-climate-targets

"Finland to get less wind power as government overhauls subsidies" http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/04/finland-windpower-idUSKCN0R40NH20150904

And you should know that Spain stopped most of its subsidies and UK has now realised the enormous cost and is winding them back too.

Aidan, you really don't have much of an understanding what you are talking about but it doesn't stop you making no end of baseless assertions and never acknowledging you've learnt anything from the responses to your comments on the various blogs where you post.

I'd urge you to open your mind, throw off the blinkers, avoid motivated reasoning, and stop dodging the relevant facts.