Comment by mpweiher
1 day ago
And even then it's not actually true.
First, solar and wind are massively subsidized pretty much everywhere they are deployed, in addition to the indirect subsidies they get from China subsidizing production (and internal deployments).
Second, and more importantly, LCOE is not the full cost, as you rightly point out. It leaves out system costs, and these are huge for intermittent renewables, and not constant. They rise disproportionately as the percentage of intern mitten renewables in a particular grid rises towards 100%.
Third, and related, in most countries where renewables are deployed, intermittent renewables not just do not have to carry the burden of their intermittency, they are actually allowed to pass these burdens and costs onto their reliable competitors. Which is even more insane than not accounting for intermittency.
Nuclear is also extremely heavily subsidized. Be it through state sponsored loans or tax breaks (France) or the fact, that the public has to bear the cost of dismantling them (Germany). Thus, a comparison isn't that easy to make.
System costs may be high, but they are on a downward trend due to the increasing implementation of grid batteries, which also solves the third argument.
> Nuclear is also extremely heavily subsidized.
That is also not true. For example in Germany, nuclear production was never subsidized at all. Even Greenpeace and the Green's chief anti-nuclear Lobbyist, Jürgen Trittin, called nuclear power plants "money printing machines".
> Be it through state sponsored loans or tax breaks (France)
Those are minute compared to subsidies intermittent renewables get in Germany. In particular as there is the ARENH program, which is effectively a negative subsidy (it takes money away from the nuclear company EDF), and of course EDF is profitable and gives money to the government.
When you add it all up, France has a negative subsidy of € 0.1 - 7 billion yearly, whereas Germany subsidizes intermittent renewables to the tune of around €20 billion a year.
> System costs may be high, but they are on a downward trend
That is also not true. System costs are actually rising, because yields are dropping, the share of renewables has risen and the (fairly cheap) coal backup is to be eliminated. Total costs are now estimated at several trillion euros. For comparison, France's nuclear program cost a total of €228 billion through 2011.
Until 2016, nuclear energy received more subsidize than renewables in Germany. [1]
EDF was nationalized in 2022, doesn't have to build money reserves for decommissioning (which would be tens of billions), is about 50 billion in debt and just got a 5 billion government loan to keep some old reactors running and another government loan to build new plants. These are not minute interventions, both France and Germany heavily subsidize their sectors (in different ways). With the ARENH program ending in 2025, a more fair comparison will be possible.
I have to read up on the system costs though, that may be ai fair point.
[1] https://www.bundestag.de/resource/blob/877586/4e4dce913c3d88... (last page)
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> For example in Germany, nuclear production was never subsidized at all.
Except financing research and development, guaranteeing loans to reduce default risk and interest rates, capping liabilities to enable insureability at lower rates by guaranteeing to fix damages in case of critical failures with public money, financing and organizing emergency civil protection measures, as well as waste disposal, granting massive tax cuts, doing the diplomatic leg work to import uranium and protecting its transport with the police, all and all summing up public spending on making nuclear energy in germany to 169,4 billion euros according to the scientific service of the Bundestag (Document Number WD 5 - 3000 - 090/21), with the more green leaning FOES calculating 304 billion. And on top of that it is estimated that another 100 billion in public money will be needed to fix up long term waste disposal sites morsleben and asse.
... well except from those few hundred billion euros they barely ever subsidize it at all.
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