There’s a surge of common sense in Sweden that’s horribly lacking in the US. Congrats to Sweden for voting in favor of nuclear energy and scrapping a 100% renewable goal.
Reuters reports Swedish parliament passes new energy target, easing way for new nuclear power.
Sweden’s parliament on Tuesday adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power.
Changing the target to “100% fossil-free” electricity, from “100% renewable” is key to the government’s plan to meet an expected doubling of electricity demand to around 300 TwH by 2040 and reach net zero emissions by 2045.
The coalition plans to cut the bio-fuel mix in petrol and diesel, leading to bigger CO2 emissions, a move that could mean Sweden missing 2030 emissions goals.
Proposals by Sweden to allow countries to prolong subsidies for standby coal power plants have also been met concern in the EU, while Stockholm also wanted Brussels to water-down a landmark law to restore deteriorating natural habitats.
Those are all common sense measures. Here is a set of Tweets on the subject.
Trump Takes Aim at EVs
The Ever Growing Trillions of Dollars Per Year Demands to Fight Climate Change
On June 23, I commented on The Ever Growing Trillions of Dollars Per Year Demands to Fight Climate Change.
The Cost of Solidarity
- An expert group under the auspice of the UN estimates that investments have to reach the order of $1 trillion per year until 2030 to respond to the climate and biodiversity crisis.
- Oxfam estimated that $3.9 trillion per year will be needed over the same time period to fight poverty, inequality and climate change.
- The World bank estimated that it takes $4 trillion per year to build the infrastructure for this.
The cost of this “easy to make” vision is $1 trillion per year for the biodiversity crisis, plus $3.9 trillion per year to fight poverty and inequality, plus $4 trillion per year for the infrastructure. That’s a mere $8.9 million per per year until 2030, a 7-year cost of $62.3 trillion.
Energy Policy Madness
In the US, Biden’s Energy Policy Mandates Cause Severe Shortage of Electrical Steel and Transformers
In California, California Utilities Seek to Charge People Based On Income, Not Energy Usage
Also in California, Oakland Teachers Strike in 5th Day Over Climate Justice, Homeless Housing, Reparations
Finally please consider Ford Gets a $9.2 Billion Cheap Government Loan With Inflationary Strings Attached
In response, a friend just pinged me with this comment: “This is colossally, stupid public policy. The government should not get involved in determining what is the best approach to electric vehicles. It should set standards and let the free enterprise system work it out.”
Unfortunately, it appears Biden pledged 0.7 percent of US wealth for global inequities.
Fortunately, the money isn’t flowing. But it would have if Democrats held the House, Senate, and White House.
This celebrations on the nuclear comeback in Sweden is quite funny. There hasn’t been any blocking stop for new nuclear plants more than the restriction on the number of reactors, and the places they could be built, since the four party energy agreement in 2009. The new law is allowing buildout in new places and has scrapped the limit of reactors in use to allow for SMRs. That’s all. No new subsidies that would support investment decisions, and no blocking of cheap wind and solar. In fact wind will surpass nuclear as a share of electricity generation quite soon. Last year wind accounted for 20 % and nuclear 31 %, and that was a year with below average wind speeds. But new wind parks are being built with larger and more economic turbines around the country.
The problem for nuclear has always been the economy. In the old regulated market, when the current plants were built, investors were guaranteed return on investment by the government fixing the prices, and state owned Vattenfall, with the major share of the hydro production as backing, could play a dominant role in the buildout. Now there are no guarantees available. In 2009 the supporters believed a free market would mean a renaissance for new reactors, something that did not happen beacause of the permanently low prices on Nordpool electricity market. Last years gas shortage meant a turnaround in the price outlook, but who know how long that will last. This year the price has come down a lot, and it takes at least 10 years to build a new reactor.
»Stockholm also wanted Brussels to water-down a landmark law to restore deteriorating natural habitats«
These are the same EU (biodiversity restoration) mandates that have lead to strangling Dutch farmers with their reactive nitrogen (ammonia) restraints in a country where 1/3 of this nitrogen is imported from across the borders, thanks to the wind.
Nuclear power is considered green and Sweden gets about 45% of its electricity from hydro electricity aka dams which is another green technology.
Come on.
>The cost of this “easy to make” vision is $1 trillion per year for the biodiversity crisis, plus $3.9 trillion per year to fight poverty and inequality, plus $4 trillion per year for the infrastructure. That’s a mere $8.9 million per per year until 2030, a 7-year cost of $62.3 trillion.
It’s easy (and probably underestimated) compared with the realistic alternative. The realistic alternative is that the BRICs ditch not just the dollar, but the entire currency exchange system (they’re talking about a PPP-based exchange system – that isn’t what current exchange is like!) If that came to pass, the USA could become a lot poorer very quickly.
“Gradually, and then suddenly.”
We tried wind power in the Middle Ages. It did not scale up well.
We really only need an interim solution until fusion tech is ready.
Seems to me natural gas is a good interim solution.
“In response, a friend just pinged me with this comment: “This is colossally, stupid public policy. The government should not get involved in determining what is the best approach to electric vehicles. It should set standards and let the free enterprise system work it out.””
I would agree 100% that the government should not get involved in determining what is the best approach to electric vehicles and should let the free enterprise system.
That being said, like I have stated many times, IMO, we are at peak energy sources, peak economy, peak etc. etc.
The worlds largest producer, the US is now at a top plateau in oil production and I have no doubt that within a few years, that we will have production results that bear this out. The questions, I have is what the repercussions are.
I have stated many times that the Permean is the last growth in US oil production. Interesting take for anyone interested provided by Mike Shellman, an oil patch worker.
link to oilystuffblog.com
“The “quality” of oil, if that is what you want to call it, from HZ tight wells in the Permian Basin, particularly the Delaware sub-basin, is declining. It’s very light and getting lighter. This typically is more difficult to refine and a lot of Permian tight oil is being sold at a growing discount to West Texas Intermediate (Houston), Brent and Feteh in Dubai.
Sadly for America, once Permian tight oil production declines to US refinery absorption rates (4.8 MM BOPD) and oil exports cease out of necessity, LTO will be so light it won’t be worth refining. We will have shot ourselves in both feet, and both knees. ”
Also as for the free enterprise system, Biden is still drawing from the SPR, we likely can expect this to increase as the election nears.
link to ycharts.com
A slightly older chart can be found at this link, detailing Bidens drawdown of the SPR.
link to oilystuffblog.com
Mike Shellman actually selected spots to drill, drilled those spot, and currently owns several oil wells. He’s an oilman looking out for our energy predicament.
I’ve said it and referenced it a number of times on this blog. Exxon has a graph that shows the peaking of world crude oil production. It peaked in 2018 and may re-peak around 2032. After that, the decline is permanent. Trump is not doing you any favors by dissing EV’s.
How is it sweet have functioning brains in Americans don’t?
Your Dad’s reactor was too large and each plant had to be able to power an entire city. They are prone to big catastrophes and failsafes that don’t work sometimes. Newer, smaller reactors are not expected to generate that much energy and as such can be shut down easily. There are also designs which could use recycled spent fuel, since old rods are only 10% depleted. Completely inefficient use of a fuel in the past. So mining new uranium may not be as crucial. From DoE:
SPENT FUEL CAN BE RECYCLED
That’s right!
Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts.
More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor.
The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do.”
This means that nuclear waste is not longer waste but more akin to recycling spent oil or grinding up old gold mine tailings to get “waste” gold and silver.
Nuclear power, thanks to past mistakes and poor quality, needs to advance past perceptions from 1975
Sweden had lots HYDROELECTRICITY
Hydroelectricity is just buffered solar and wind energy.
Did you think the water got up there by magic?
This is a smart move, but nuclear power will still have lots of problems getting built in Sweden and elsewhere. First and foremost is economic. Finland appears to have figured out how to make nuclear economic. The U.S. hasn’t (Exhibit A is the $25 Billion Vogtle plant which took 13 years to build). South Korea and China also seem to have figured out how to build nuclear plants economically. What is wrong with the U.S.?
“100% Renewable” is only possible if there’s adequate Hydro to flex total generation with the ups and downs of wind and solar. The latest generation light water reactors can flex between 50% and 100%, but then, will they be economic on a $/kwh basis?
The Chinese are now building a pilot molten salt thorium reactor. China has one of the largest thorium reserves in the world. This may be the answer to the problem of low cost, reliable, zero CO2 electrification. Why isn’t the U.S. pursuing this? Will we end up depending on China for this technology, which was invented in the USA (Oak Ridge Labs) back in the ’60’s?
The USA has a NIMBY problem. That’s why very little of consequence can be built anymore and what does get built takes a decade or longer to be approved due to all the agencies involved along with the inevitable protests/lawsuits to stop the project.
As for US nuclear reactors, the original designs were all meant to allow those reactors to breed nuclear weapons material on demand. That’s why the US reactors aren’t using Thorium and why they are different from Canadian / European / Japanese reactors.
Power reactors were never designed to produce weapons material. In fact they are profoundly unsuitable to do any such thing. That lie was the cry of insane leftists who have consistently stopped any advancement of power reactors for the last 60 years. That’s why there are no new power reactors, and the existing ones are all 1950s tech. Because insane leftists stopped any advancement. How would you like a first generation cell phone powered by a car battery?
That’s what they did to nuclear power.
Netflix has a great documentary called The Days about Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan after the tsunami. If the earthquake and tsunami had managed to be a little bit stronger and killed a few more people, about a third of Japan would not be habitable. It was largely due to the sacrifice of those left behind that it didn’t happen.
Add this to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and the pattern is there…Nuclear is great in perfect conditions but as soon as you have a disaster (war, plague, earthquake, etc) we are all rolling the dice on massive destruction and radiation making large areas uninhabitable. Look no further than what Putin did to that dam in Ukraine and what might happen if Chernobyl containment gets destroyed.
Now having said all that there seems to be plenty of profit potential in uranium mining stocks so let’s make some money trashing the planet.
Small nukes like on aircraft carriers and submarines buried under the town’s football field has always been the answer.
Way more have died from coal than from nuclear. And those reactors were built using 1960s technology. New technologies are much safer.
Getting rid of functioning power plants is stupid. Better to retire them at end of life and then replace them with something better. We should try to get as much as we can from renewables and batteries and use nuclear as a fallback option when needed.
And that’s because you can just ramp up some nuclear power plants in a year or two when you need them.
We need lots more nukes, and we need to keep them out of the hands of people that do dumb things with them. Not an easy task.
This is a totally logical approach by Sweden.
The amount of sunlight they get isn’t enough to generate meaningful amounts of electric power given that for months at a time a large swath of the country is in total darkness or near total darkness. They are also not a flat plain country that can generate lots of wind power either.
That leaves Geothermal, Tidal or Nuclear as their only reasonable options and given they expect to double their energy needs by 2040 Nuclear is the only technology that’s mature enough to get there in that time frame.
Consider this an upvote. It is a pity the same rational thinking does not occur in the USA. Instead, we virtue signal and follow the herd into solar and wind.
Living on my boat for six months of the year in the Bahamas, with energy from a wind generator and solar panels, has made me very aware there are considerable limitations to green technology, some of which will change lifestyle in ways we don’t consider. I also have a diesel generator for those days when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.
“Living on my boat for six months of the year in the Bahamas, with energy from a wind generator and solar panels, has made me very aware there are considerable limitations to green technology, some of which will change lifestyle in ways we don’t consider. I also have a diesel generator for those days when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow.”
Oddly enough, my youtube algorhythms always keep bringing me people living on their boats in Bahamas, Greece, etc and always have a bikini clad girl as clickbait. Looks like an interesting lifestyle but for myself, Id be terrified of getting caught in a storm.
link to asiafinancial.com
I have no doubt that our lives are about to be changed in was that we havent considered. I also believe that there are considerable limitations to green technology. Mish has stated just the supply of the raw materials is a limiting factor and I also have no doubt this to be true. For example the following link claims a 500,000 metric tons shortfall in lithium by the year 2030. I believe this is representative of pretty much all materials required.
Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, is growing rapidly across the Americas, Asia and Australia. Still, it expects global lithium demand to exceed supply by 500,000 metric tons in 2030. Various consultancies and other producers have slightly different projections, but all warn of a looming shortage.
“It’s a big challenge,” said Eric Norris, head of Albemarle’s lithium business.”
I will not buy an electric car.
This will allow some idiots to increase lithium pollution.
Lithium pollution calms people and prevents hysteria and mania.
Doug, I refuse to have to take regular blood tests for my car.
For that matter, the Northeast US and Northwest have so much cloud coverage that solar is not feasible as a main source of energy. And this was known back in the mid 1980’s.
The tides on the Baltic Sea are negligible. I don’t recall a lot of famous hotsprings or volcanos in Sweden either, so there goes geothermal.
Other than hydropower on the rivers that don’t freeze solid in the winter, I don’t see a lot of options for keeping the lights on. Clear cutting the forests to feed the boilers only works twice a century.
I’m surprised anyone is left in Sweden after everyone has died from not having vaccine mandates.
We have a habit of trying all the wrong solutions before the correct one. at some point we will recognize nuclear as clean and safe but certainly not here at this point.
The government should not get involved in determining what is the best approach to electric vehicles. It should set standards and let the free enterprise system work it out.”
And we can just buy all our chips and cars from China because their taxpayers are pouring money into TMSC and SAIC. What could possibly be wrong with that?
In an ideal world you’re right. We don’t live in an ideal world.
Sweden Scraps 100% Renewable Energy Goal for More Reliable Nuclear Power: Greta Thunberg has breakdown and renounces her citizenship.
If Greta really cared, she’d start running for office as soon as she is legally old enough to do so. If Sweden cares about her message they’d elect her and she could start on the road to becoming their leader.
Everyone ‘cares’ but they want somebody else to deal with the problem without any inconvenience whatsoever.
The elites don’t want any inconvenience for themselves. They exempt themselves from what they impose on the general public. Just look at all the carbon spewing private jets that fly into WEF Davos every year.
They should take electric jets.
Do you want to inconvenience yourself?
“Do you want to inconvenience yourself?”
The elites of WEF Davos don’t inconvenience themselves. They consider themselves entitled.