Peter Lang,
Burning fuel to produce energy while the sun shines is an enormous waste of money.

Switching to renewables shifts the cost burden from variable costs to fixed costs, and that's something that ultimately makes an economy more competitive. The effect is particularly strong at the moment as interest rates are at record lows.

Government imposed incentives are a different matter, and I accept the existinng ones are inefficient. IMO governments should instead offer concessional loans for renewable energy infrastructure.

Aidan.

Your comments are unsupported, irrational nonsense. Despite repeating this same nonsense on many web site all over the place, and many commenters pointing out the nonsense in your comments, you continue to post the same nonsense. You seldom if ever acknowledge you are wrong or correct your mistakes or withdraw your comments. The fact you are unwilling to acknowledge when you are wrong is one of the '10 signs of intellectual dishonesty', as are your frequent strawnman arguments and many of the other tactics you apply to push your ideological beliefs.
Read '10 signs of intellectual dishonesty' here: http://judithcurry.com/2013/04/20/10-signs-of-intellectual-honesty/

"Burning fuel to produce energy while the sun shines is an enormous waste of money."
Disingenuous and WRONG! as are your other comments. It's nonsense to try to cherry pick factoids to try to make a case. The cost has to be compared on the full life cycle cost of the alternatives embedded in a system to meet requirements.

Virtually all authoritative studies comparing options show that nuclear is a far cheaper way of achieving large reduction in the emissions intensity of electricity, and comparisons of countries like Germany and France show it in practice. Frances electricity is cheaper and it's emissions intensity of electricity is 15% of Germany's. How much clearer that that can you get.

No point addressing the rest of your comment, it's all the same sort of disinformation and nonsense.

Aidan, you keep making silly, baseless assertions. You really ought to give up.
BTW, I given the links for many properly conducted, authoritative studies many times in previously. You can refer back to them if you want to educate yourself (although I know your not interested in anything other than continuing pushing your ideology.

Peter Lang, before you yet again disonestly accuse me of intellectual dishonesty, I suggest you try reading what I've actually written! Because it was not the anti nuclear rant you seem to think it is. Indeed in my first post on this thread I acknowleded that nuclear poser is the best solution in some situations.

Why are you so relucant to acknwledge that different power sources have different cost structures? And that low interest rate conditions favour renewables and high interest rate conditions favour fossil fuels?

You seem to be advocating nuclear as a one size fits all solution, but you're overstating the case (another one of those signs of intellectual dishonesty that you're so concernsed about in others). French nuclear power is so cheap because they inflated away most of the build costs; In other countries the costs aren't so favourable.

And the case for renewables is much stronger in Australia than in Germany, partly because of our low population densuty and partly beause we're much sunnier.

Aidan,

>"I suggest you try reading what I've actually written! Because it was not the anti nuclear rant you seem to think it is. "

Another strawman. Another example of intellectual dishonesty - you keep providing your own evidence. I didn't say anything about "anti nuclear rant". You made that up. In your words: "I suggest you try reading what I've actually written! "

For others following this blog, they may like to read this excellent post:
"German Energiewende – Modern Miracle or Major Misstep" http://judithcurry.com/2015/12/02/german-energiewende-modern-miracle-or-major-misstep/

And notice this chart of electricity prices in Europe: http://www.theblackswanblog.com/BSB_Library/Electricity-prices-europe.png
Denmark and Germany (countries with the highest proportion of intermittent renewables) have the highest electricity prices by far (2x France's). Germany's CO2 emissions intensity of electricity is about 6x France's. It should be clear by now how misguided and irrational are the renewable energy advocates.

I'd suggest those interested read the post themselves and do not take any notice of what Aidan says about it - any comments he makes about it will more than likely be disingenuous, misleading, use misrepresentations and strawman tactics. Aidan has a habit of using strawman to try to discredit articles like this. He'll quote a bit, or make up his own summary of the main points and imply they are what the author said or meant, or he'll give some irrelevant factoids or some other disingenuous information.