It already takes longer to build new nuclear starting now than build enough renewable + batteries + transmission starting now. So good news! We don't have to "get there soon", we are there already! We have everything we need except the political will to take resources away from fossil fuels and invest them towards a clean energy future.
Nuclear will continue to be built and it should but it is not the thing we need to focus heavily on.
And how long from proposal to breaking ground?
And how many can we build at the same time?
Can we find enough sites or extend existing ones enough?
What problems will we have with water shortages for cooling?
And so on.
We are, thankfully, going to continue to build nuclear all over the world, perhaps most importantly in places like China where they may convert thermal coal plants to nuclear, but it's going to be a relatively small part of the energy mix overall and is not going to solve the doubt that the poster had and my original response was aimed at. Renewables + batteries + transmission, and I should add efficiency improvements, can do it now, at scale, and faster than we can imagine.
The United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom have all reduced their per-capita energy usage since the peak (earliest peak usage was UK in 1973, latest was Canada in 2007), and I think we can argue that quality-of-life (by at least some metrics) has increased since then.
Let's use the UNCTAD definition of developing countries - there are a number of countries which exceed Canada's per-capita energy usage (the highest of those I mention above) - Qatar, UAE, Trinidad and Tobago and Kuwait.
But those are all small countries, the highest per-capita energy usage by a larger nation is Turkmenistan (exceeding all of the European countries mentioned in the parent - UK, France, Germany - and Japan).
But that's not really the point. Doubtless there is a correlation between energy usage and standard of living. But it's not a 1:1, and there are some huge benefits to be gained - e.g. the US (77,028 kWh / person / year) has triple the usage per capital of the UK (28,501 kWh / person / year). Even in Europe, France and Germany could reduce their usage by a quarter to bring it to the UK level.
Also, those high usage small countries (including Trinidad and Turkmenistan) are huge oil producing countries where energy is subsidized to an absurd degree to ‘buy’ population compliance. That energy is coming straight from burning hydrocarbons.
They still are way below the big developed countries, near as I can tell. Sorting by ‘most recent value’, the list is pretty much either ‘huge petrokingdom’, or ‘highly developed nation’ until Estonia/Slovenia/Netherlands at 6.something MWh/yr.
The data does seem to be old though!
I am impressed by Spain’s low usage, but they culturally also minimize things like HVAC - since they were ‘civilized’ long before AC was a thing. They still are about 2x the median.
I’m using „our world in data“ - the link in my first post.
A difference may be that my figures are not just electricity, but „primary energy“, defined as:
„Primary energy includes energy that the end user needs, in the form of electricity, transport and heating, plus inefficiencies and energy that is lost when raw resources are transformed into a usable form.”
Ah, that makes sense - it’s doing the ‘tons of oil energy equivalent’, which those countries are petrostates/petrokingdoms which typically have things like free (or nearly so) gasoline, natural gas, electricity, etc. as part of the gov’t popularity equation.
Which those states need to do that typically because they don’t really care about any actual quality of life improvements, or developing any other parts of the economy.
Because why bother, when you can do those other things more easily, it makes folks dependent on the gov’t, and it avoids things like people being more educated and independent and asking tough questions about those in power.
So I guess I should amend my comment - ‘except for countries where the gov’t is incentivizing free unlimited petro energy due to gov’t policy, quality of life still roughly tracks energy consumption and availability’.
Though then we’d need to argue about what quality of life really means - most Spaniards would top most Americans in physical and mental health in my experience, for example. But Americans definitely have more stuff.
This slightly mad take seems very popular with people who at the very same time seem to hate cheap solar and wind energy and love expensive (and/or nonexistent) nuclear and fossil fuels.
It's a really weird subculture that's grown out of climate denial.
Energy efficiency is a thing. The lowest hanging fruit is EVs and heat pumps that provide 4x more travel or heat than using fossil fuels directly. They're so much more efficient that you could burn the fossils in power plants to generate electricity and still come out ahead. That would be silly though since wind and solar are the cheapest available electricity.
And of course you can power these with nuclear, which would be relevant if they weren't just pretending to like nuclear and really just stalling progress for fossil fuel interests.
> What do you think will happen to the power grid when everyone switches to EVs?
Well the people who run grids keep suggesting that it'll help them make better use of their grid assets and so reduce the average cost of a kWh of electricity to consumers. It is after all a giant fleet of smart batteries.
But you, the person who thinks more energy use is better for society, are apparently making an exception for electricity use, which if it goes up will cause some unspecified calamity?
That doesn't seem very consistent? Well, I suppose it's consistently pro-fossil fuels.
> Well the people who run grids keep suggesting that it'll help them make better use of their grid assets
Do they? Or are they also concerned about the increasing strain on grid infra, especially due to the fact that so many energy sources are now intermittent?
> which if it goes up will cause some unspecified calamity?
It's not an unspecified calamity. Failure modes for grids are known.
> Well, I suppose it's consistently pro-fossil fuels.
Funny how you accuse others of making mad takes while keeping doing one mad take after another
> Yes, it is. There's a limit to how efficient you can go though
This is why reducing energy use needs to be in addition to everything else: solar, nuclear, wind, batteries, the works. Some of the R&D won't work out as planned; some solutions will only work in specific situations. That's okay, as long as we don't have all our eggs in one basket.
The orders of magnitude needed for storage are not competitive with nuclear in any reasonable scenario.
Nuclear exists and is proven technology. Battery storage at the capacity and price scale required are not. That remains true even if you want absolutely to believe we can't build nuclear reactors faster than in 10 years, and we almost certainly can by starting mass producing them again.
> However, the company warned in Tuesday’s report that the “termination” of some clean energy projects during 2023 had pushed down the amount of renewables it had access to.
