Last year, Europe was on the brink of an energy breakdown as Russian gas flows dried up and most of Europe doubled down on renewable energy.
The renewable energy bet paid off, in a way. Solar and wind electricity generation in Europe hit a record in 2022. In fact, for the first time in history, wind and solar together produced more electricity than natural gas-fired power plants.
There was just one problem with that. Lower hydro and nuclear output more than wiped out the significance of that record output.
Droughts were severe in Europe last year. They threatened major trade routes such as the Rhein in Germany and the Po in Italy. And they also caused severe declines in hydropower electricity output. For example, in Spain, hydropower output dropped by almost half because of the droughts. All this might repeat this year as well.
Meanwhile, nuclear wasn’t doing so swell, either. France suddenly found that years of underinvestment in maintenance would have consequences: emergency reactor shutdowns for repairs and maintenance.
The problems cost EDF a massive annual loss of $19 billion as half of its reactors had to be shut down for maintenance. Most blamed the pandemic, but nuclear experts such as Mark Nelson saw the roots of the problem much further into the past when France decided to bet on renewables over nuclear.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
BP and the International Energy Agency (IEA) measure the contribution of renewables to the global energy mix in terms of primary energy consumed while the World Bank estimates it in terms of final energy consumed. All three give different results, with BP estimating a total renewables contribution of 9.5% in 2015 compared to IEA’s 13.7% and the World Bank’s 18.1%. The BP/IEA differences become larger when contributions are segregated by source (BP estimates almost three times as much energy from hydro as as IEA and IEA estimates four times as much energy from “other renewables” as BP). This post documents these discrepancies while making no attempt to say who is right and who is wrong – that would have to be the subject of another post. But it does raise the question of whether we really know how large a contribution renewables are making to the world’s energy mix.
It’s now day 4 of the Energy Externality Game. Diesel generators were next on the list, but I decided to skip over that for the time being and to move on to the more exciting topic of nuclear power. Nuclear power has a long supply chain and needs to take into account U mining, ore processing and upgrading to yellow cake; enrichment and fuel manufacture; construction of enrichment facilities, reactors and power stations; operation of the foregoing; decommissioning and waste storage.
Day 2 of The Energy Externality Game and we are assessing gas fired power generation using a combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT). In scoring gas we need to take into account the whole of the gas exploration and supply side of the business (which is complex, see below), transportation of gas and the CCGT operation itself. I was a little disappointed in the level of audience participation yesterday, with only 11 participants in total, although the results are very interesting. It would be really good if we could push that beyond 20. Hopefully all of yesterday’s players will play again. Once you get in the swing it takes <10 minutes to compile the scores.
The economics term 
A major obstacle to cutting global CO2 emissions is growth in world energy demand. In this post I examine world energy growth projections from a number of different sources and compare them with the growth trends that will be necessary to meet emissions reductions goals. It goes without saying that there is an enormous gulf between the two. This leaves the world with a stark choice – cut fossil fuel consumption by 80% by 2050 or suffer the consequences of global warming, whatever they may be.
