10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!
Except we know how to avoid that. The wind often blows when the sun isn’t shining. We have tons of historical weather data on the lulls in between. That gives us how much capacity we need to ride out those lulls.
Doing 100% wind+solar+storage is a tall order. Fortunately, we don’t need to, at least not right away. There’s some non-linear factors at work; going down to 95% or so means you need a fraction of the storage capacity for a reliable grid. The extra 5% is taken up by fossil fuel plants, and then only running as needed (something that’s hard to do with nuclear, which is why adding it in a hybrid model isn’t feasible). Since we’re aiming for 80% non-carbon by 2030, this is basically what we’re doing, anyway. Ramping up to 100% renewable from there is completely achievable.
China has macro level problems with the legacy of its one-child policy. It’s going to have to support an aging population with too few young people in the factories. This will also hit over the next decade.
10 years from now, you might be in a situation where the grid is unstable and capacity is insufficient in front of demand. You will also be facing potential renewal of existing solar panels, wind farms, batteries storage, etc.
If you lack capacity, any attempt at industry relocation locally will be a pipe-dream.
And at that time, you’ll say either “it’s too late to rely on nuclear now” or “fortunately we’re about to get these new power plants running”. You’re not building any nuclear power plan for immediate needs, you’re building for the next decades.
Meanwhile, one country will be ready to take on “clean production” and be very attractive to industrial projects because it already planned all of that years ago and companies will be able to claim “green manufacturing”. That country is… China!
Except we know how to avoid that. The wind often blows when the sun isn’t shining. We have tons of historical weather data on the lulls in between. That gives us how much capacity we need to ride out those lulls.
Doing 100% wind+solar+storage is a tall order. Fortunately, we don’t need to, at least not right away. There’s some non-linear factors at work; going down to 95% or so means you need a fraction of the storage capacity for a reliable grid. The extra 5% is taken up by fossil fuel plants, and then only running as needed (something that’s hard to do with nuclear, which is why adding it in a hybrid model isn’t feasible). Since we’re aiming for 80% non-carbon by 2030, this is basically what we’re doing, anyway. Ramping up to 100% renewable from there is completely achievable.
China has macro level problems with the legacy of its one-child policy. It’s going to have to support an aging population with too few young people in the factories. This will also hit over the next decade.