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yodelshady 4 days ago

Levelised Cost of Energy is the highest, in the entire developed world, in the UK, which has enough wind and solar installed to entirely meet needs today.

It is NOT cheap, it is cheap for sellers, because they account on the basis of a MWh being equally useful all the time. It isn't. There are TWh-scale shortfalls in winter because, and a medieval peasant understood this, a shortage of ambient energy is what winter is, and it's worth paying energy penny you have to avoid its worst effects.

Business is not better. I've worked in the chemicals industry, and conferences in Europe have been like a wake for the last decade. I've overseen large orders go to China because, I could not give a shit how much it cost, the European green alternative - for delivery within Europe - could not guarantee timeframes, due to reliance on renewables. The Chinese shipped product could. That is your "cheap".

You can buy uranium from Russia, Kazakhstan, Mali, Canada, US, Australia, or the sea if you really want to, all of those have large reserves, and store multiple years' worth more or less by accident, modern industrial processes actually struggle to make sense at the low volumes nuclear requires. Bringing that up as a problem is just not honest.

mrks_hy 4 days ago | parent [-]

Can you please source and explain your claims? They don't match my understanding.

For example:

> Levelised Cost of Energy is the highest, in the entire developed world, in the UK, which has enough wind and solar installed to entirely meet needs today.

Do you mean cost per country (not levelized?)? Even then, UK energy is not the most expensive.

flir 4 days ago | parent [-]

They can't (because LCoE is a per-project or per-technology measure, not a grid-wide measure, for a start).

UK energy is expensive because we have gas-linked wholesale pricing. That's nothing to do with the true cost of renewables. I'm going to go out on a limb and say they're being disingenuous.

(Gas-linked pricing was implemented for sensible reasons, but I don't see how it continues to be tenable today).

mrks_hy 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, that's what I thought, but wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt.