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> I am not a free market zealot, but you cannot compare the final price to the one in Germany. Well, I don't disagree with this. You were the one claiming that

by pyrale 3y ago

> I am not a free market zealot, but you cannot compare the final price to the one in Germany. Well, I don't disagree with this. You were the one claiming that electricity is cheaper in Germany, and trying to find a way to compare the two. Germany's prices are taxed for future investments, while France's prices are calculed to amortize past investments. That's a significant accounting difference. However, when you measure electricity costs, you have to understand which production systems create it. France's current power (and therefore prices) comes from nuclear system built in the 70's to 90's, which happened to be extremely cheap and reliable, and that is why we have cheap energy 40 years later. I can't claim that the next generation of nuclear plants (or anything else, it's not obvious that France will have nuclear plants in 30 years at the current pace) will be as cheap, so we may have to pay more in the future. > Whatever it is, it costs EDF money, and therefore it needs to be a part of the price. I have no doubt these investments will be amortized in the next 10 years, and factored in French power bills. > The electricity market there contains hundreds of companies that all need to be profitable, or at least not lose money, or they will simply be removed from the market. No offense, but as a French person interested in the electricity industry, the German model isn't a great example. With the money poured in the Energiewende (and, I mean, good for them, they have enough money to waste it), the results are almost criminal. France doesn't have that money, so we can't afford quixotic, inefficient policies. > Here is an article from 2012, where it was already back then clear change is needed My guess is that after Hollande's election, no one wanted to build new nuclear (which they probably should have considering France's low interest rates) but no one had a good plan for an alternative energy source. Honestly, there's nothing good to say about France's electricity policy between 2007 and 2020. > Scholz or Merkel or whoever doesn't go around making plans on how they will build nuclear plants, which Macron does all the time. Well, yes. That's Macron. Be happy you only hear about his international policy lies.

locallost 3y ago
No, I was replying to a person saying how Germany has expensive electricity (because Luddites, I guess opposing nuclear). It's not the case because it's an apples to oranges comparison, and I used France as a counter example for nuclear. There's a lot of misinformation on the cost of the "Energiewende", I routinely see the same people throwing around numbers of 300 billion, 400 billion, 500 billion etc. 500 is the most common one, but it's baseless. I believe it was an estimate on what it might be in 2025 or something, but it has no relation to reality. In the end, whatever the correct amount may be, the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. A whole new industry was kickstarted, that resulted in deployment of terawatts of renewables capacity worldwide to date. It almost singlehandedly killed deployment of new fossil fuel plants in many countries of the world and is now starting to retire existing fossil fuel plants. And it's still growing exponentially, we will realistically see 1TW per year deployment very soon. The IEA makes estimates on future deployment and it's a joke at this point because every year their updated estimates for 2030 are shattered. I cannot imagine a more successful policy if your goal is to decarbonize the world. My point about Macron is not that his policies are wrong or that he is dishonest, I actually don't have a real problem with french nuclear, old or new. The point was that he is involved at all, and that's because the EDF cannot proceed without the government, it cannot really fund them on its own (hence, their prices are not real). You say they should've built new ones 10 years ago, but that's exactly my point. If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Now the price is "low" but at the cost of the infrastructure running on fumes.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Why? If we build new plants now, they will be amortized over their lifetime, not the very minute they're out of the gate or using existing plants. For that reason, it would take quite some time before prices shift significantly, even if we had started building 10 years ago. > the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. Well, that's your opinion. My issue with Germany's current plan is that for renewables to effectively become the bulk of a country's production, there are many things that need to be done. Investments in transport infrastructure, in electrification, in storage, in research about how to handle all of those, etc. But to date, most of the effort goes to the easiest problem (adding renewable production) and the other ones are a bit neglected. The hands-off stance of Germany's leadership is a direct source of this problem: some planification is required to succeed in this task. As an example, how often have you heard about south Germany's north-south grid issues [1], and why was this not tackled at the very beginning of Germany's renewables push? Why did germany not restructure its 4 (!) TSOs when it started greening its energy? I get that German HNers would tell me "It's political, things don't work like that in Germany". But the logical consequence is that tons of money have been spent in the wrong place. [1]: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrastructure/preparing-germanys-grid-to-bridge-the-north-south-renewables-gap/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...
  - locallost 3y ago
    Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. You are labeling a lot of things as one-off items, but the reality is that the EDF is already heavy in debt that it will take a long time to even pay that off, and eventually there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. And the price of new plants is such that it's a very heavy straw. Is it really my opinion, or are the things I mentioned actually facts? There was no renewables industry before the Energiewende, Germany implemented a transparent way to fund its creation and the whole thing blew up worldwide. As a consequence of that, a whole lot of co2 emissions in the world were not only removed but prevented entirely. I don't know why anyone would call this a failure. The North-South issue is discussed frequently, maybe not so much in the mainstream (although I honestly wouldn't know), but e.g. I see it mentioned in social media among people reporting on or dealing with energy. One of the proposals that made sense to me is that Germany should no longer have a single market and a single price, but several regions. This would force states that are blocking development like Bavaria to finally put up or shut up, e.g. either build more or pay more. Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. That you ask me why this issue wasn't solved initially is I guess not an unexpected viewpoint considering the differences in the way France and Germany work. France is more centrally planned whereas the states hold a lot of say on regulations in Germany. For the sake of this discussion it's not important which way is better, but it just is like this and it makes no sense to solve problems in a way they're otherwise never solved. Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? We are over 60 years into their commercial use and only a handful of countries even have a plan on what to do with it. A lot of money was spent on temporary storages worldwide, it would've been a lot cheaper to first solve the problem completely. So I'd dare say it's anyway not possible to solve problems completely before you actually did anything, so renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard.

by pyrale 3y ago

locallost 3y ago

No, I was replying to a person saying how Germany has expensive electricity (because Luddites, I guess opposing nuclear). It's not the case because it's an apples to oranges comparison, and I used France as a counter example for nuclear. There's a lot of misinformation on the cost of the "Energiewende", I routinely see the same people throwing around numbers of 300 billion, 400 billion, 500 billion etc. 500 is the most common one, but it's baseless. I believe it was an estimate on what it might be in 2025 or something, but it has no relation to reality. In the end, whatever the correct amount may be, the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. A whole new industry was kickstarted, that resulted in deployment of terawatts of renewables capacity worldwide to date. It almost singlehandedly killed deployment of new fossil fuel plants in many countries of the world and is now starting to retire existing fossil fuel plants. And it's still growing exponentially, we will realistically see 1TW per year deployment very soon. The IEA makes estimates on future deployment and it's a joke at this point because every year their updated estimates for 2030 are shattered. I cannot imagine a more successful policy if your goal is to decarbonize the world. My point about Macron is not that his policies are wrong or that he is dishonest, I actually don't have a real problem with french nuclear, old or new. The point was that he is involved at all, and that's because the EDF cannot proceed without the government, it cannot really fund them on its own (hence, their prices are not real). You say they should've built new ones 10 years ago, but that's exactly my point. If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Now the price is "low" but at the cost of the infrastructure running on fumes.

pyrale 3y ago
> If they'd done that when they should've, the price now would not be 20c per kWh today, but a lot more than that. Why? If we build new plants now, they will be amortized over their lifetime, not the very minute they're out of the gate or using existing plants. For that reason, it would take quite some time before prices shift significantly, even if we had started building 10 years ago. > the result is not only not criminal, it is amazing. Well, that's your opinion. My issue with Germany's current plan is that for renewables to effectively become the bulk of a country's production, there are many things that need to be done. Investments in transport infrastructure, in electrification, in storage, in research about how to handle all of those, etc. But to date, most of the effort goes to the easiest problem (adding renewable production) and the other ones are a bit neglected. The hands-off stance of Germany's leadership is a direct source of this problem: some planification is required to succeed in this task. As an example, how often have you heard about south Germany's north-south grid issues [1], and why was this not tackled at the very beginning of Germany's renewables push? Why did germany not restructure its 4 (!) TSOs when it started greening its energy? I get that German HNers would tell me "It's political, things don't work like that in Germany". But the logical consequence is that tons of money have been spent in the wrong place. [1]: https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrastructure/preparing-germanys-grid-to-bridge-the-north-south-renewables-gap/ https://www.powerengineeringint.com/smart-grid-td/td-infrast...
- locallost 3y ago
  Why? Because you can only amortize something if you can afford it. You are labeling a lot of things as one-off items, but the reality is that the EDF is already heavy in debt that it will take a long time to even pay that off, and eventually there will be a straw that breaks the camel's back. And the price of new plants is such that it's a very heavy straw. Is it really my opinion, or are the things I mentioned actually facts? There was no renewables industry before the Energiewende, Germany implemented a transparent way to fund its creation and the whole thing blew up worldwide. As a consequence of that, a whole lot of co2 emissions in the world were not only removed but prevented entirely. I don't know why anyone would call this a failure. The North-South issue is discussed frequently, maybe not so much in the mainstream (although I honestly wouldn't know), but e.g. I see it mentioned in social media among people reporting on or dealing with energy. One of the proposals that made sense to me is that Germany should no longer have a single market and a single price, but several regions. This would force states that are blocking development like Bavaria to finally put up or shut up, e.g. either build more or pay more. Regardless of that it's clear there needs to be more grid buildout, it's really not the case this is not discussed. That you ask me why this issue wasn't solved initially is I guess not an unexpected viewpoint considering the differences in the way France and Germany work. France is more centrally planned whereas the states hold a lot of say on regulations in Germany. For the sake of this discussion it's not important which way is better, but it just is like this and it makes no sense to solve problems in a way they're otherwise never solved. Also in the end the same questions could be raised for nuclear plants: why were any built before e.g. there was a plan to store nuclear waste? We are over 60 years into their commercial use and only a handful of countries even have a plan on what to do with it. A lot of money was spent on temporary storages worldwide, it would've been a lot cheaper to first solve the problem completely. So I'd dare say it's anyway not possible to solve problems completely before you actually did anything, so renewables shouldn't be kept to a non-existing standard.