[ad_1]
The development of energy markets around the world has shown us two things. First, renewable energy has become the global winner, and second, new nuclear power has proven expensive and dysfunctional. In the transition, we must focus on what can replace fossils most quickly and that is wind, solar energy, water and renewable hydrogen.
Tankesmedjan Tiden’s Daniel Färm and environmental fellow Take Aanstoot write an article on the new Swedish nuclear energy. The article does not contain any political proposals, but only raises a series of questions. It is probably symptomatic that the debate is conducted this way. The new nuclear power means the most unanswered questions and generates fewer answers to the energy challenges of tomorrow.
The authors of the article are right about one thing: the most important thing going forward is to phase out fossil energy as quickly as possible. The relevant question to ask ourselves is how we do it. Coal power is now declining globally, driven by a change that is occurring primarily in the United States and Europe. There are two factors behind the change, firstly that it is outpaced by cheap new renewable energy and secondly that the price of emissions has risen.
By 2020, 90 percent of all new electricity production has been renewable, a figure that the International Energy Agency predicts will increase even more in the future. Both factors are the result of green political engineering. Renewable energy has been driven by German green politicians and higher emissions prices, among other things, have been driven by a proposal that the Swedish Green Party has pushed at the EU level to sharpen emissions trading of the European Union.
It is common for the phase-out of fossil fuels to oppose the decommissioning of certain nuclear reactors. But the reason nuclear power reactors are shutting down today is that they have gotten old, uncertain, and need large investments to keep running. It is simply cheaper with the new renewable energy than the old nuclear energy.
What has probably become the nail in the coffin of this technology is that France, which has so far been perhaps the country most eager to develop the technology, has now announced that fourth-generation nuclear power will not be available until after 2050. We need to have solved the climate crisis long before that.
For several decades, nuclear power advocates have been talking about fourth generation nuclear power. Färm and Aanstoot make it look like the technology is new and facing a breakthrough. That is not true. Research on fourth generation nuclear power has been conducted since the mid-20th century. During this more than half a century, almost all projects have failed, been costly and have been delayed. What has probably become the nail in the coffin of this technology is that France, which has so far been perhaps the country most eager to develop the technology, has now announced that fourth-generation nuclear power will not be available until after 2050. We need to have solved the climate crisis long before that.
When the International Energy Agency classifies countries’ conditions for restructuring, they claim that Sweden is the country in the world that has the best conditions for the production of 100% renewable electricity. And we are on the way to the goal. We are now building renewable electricity production at about the same rate that we expanded nuclear power in the 1980s. In just three years, wind power will account for roughly a third of our electricity production. At the same time, we have not even started to seriously use the long Swedish coastline to build offshore wind power, which alone could account for more than a third of current Swedish production.
Now that we are going to phase out fossil fuels, we must ask ourselves the question: how do we do it in the fastest and most efficient way possible? In fact, we already have the answer. It takes a few years to build wind and solar power, while nuclear power takes 10-20 years. Solar and wind energy are already the cheapest energy sources in all relevant markets today. Therefore, it is faster and cheaper. With hydroelectric power as the foundation and hydrogen as the balancing force, these technologies perform excellently in tomorrow’s energy system. And then it immediately becomes weird to get caught up in the expensive and dangerous nuclear technology of the 20th century.
