Comment by leonidasrup

If you are now (in the year 2026) optimizing only for costs of producing electricity then you end with electric grid which has more or less structure of Chinese electric grid - big chunk produced with domestic fueled base-load fossil fuel power plants+nuclear power plants, as much hydro as you can build, little bit variable renewables.

If for example Germany would optimize for costs of producing electricity then they would not shut down already build and running nuclear power plants, would not import LNG, would use much more domestic coal.

If you care for CO2 emissions (which is not the case in China) then the problem of electric grid is much more complicated.

Germany is a nice example of electric grid with significant amount of variable renewable penetration (lot of solar and wind, small amount of hydropower). First they decided to phase-out nuclear power and ban construction of nuclear power plants (beginning in 2000), then they decided to replace domestic coal production with imported fossil fuels and then decide to decarbonize grid (until 2045), which is now much more expensive because nuclear phase-out.

In contrast France has already decarbonized the electric grid.

The economic situation EDF is bad because decade long taxation of EDF, the ARENH mechanism.

Under the so-called Regulated Access to Incumbent Nuclear Electricity (Accès Régulé à l’Electricité Nucléaire Historique, ARENH) mechanism set up to foster competition, rival energy suppliers could buy electricity produced by EDF's nuclear power plants located in France that were commissioned before 8 December 2010. Under such contracts, between July 2011 and December 2025, suppliers could buy up to 100 TWh - or about 25% of EDF's annual nuclear output - at a fixed price of EUR42 per MWh.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Agreement-on-pos...

https://www.8advisory.com/en/2026/03/31/nuclear-power-naviga...

So no France didn't actively shielding its inflexible aging nuclear fleet from renewable competition, it was shielding renewable competition from its aging nuclear fleet.