By Paul Homewood
The National Grid is busy building a new 1000MW interconnector to France, due to open in 2020.
But will France have any surplus power to sell us?
Nicolas Hulot, France’s environment minister, announced last month that France could close “up to 17 nuclear reactors” by 2025, as France 24 reported at the time:
Nicolas Hulot, France’s environment minister, announced on Monday that France could close “up to 17 nuclear reactors” by 2025.
Hulot says the move aims to bring policy into line with a law on renewable energy that aims to reduce French reliance on nuclear power to 50 percent. France currently derives close to 75 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. The push for diversification comes on the heels of other high-profile stances taken by Hulot and the administration of President Emmanuel Macron, including a ban on new fossil fuel exploration an end to the sale of gas and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040, and a recently announced climate conference to be held on December 12 for the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Paris Accord.
“It’s understandable that in order to reach that target, we will have to close a number of reactors … it could be up to 17 reactors, we’ll have to see,” Hulot told French radio station RTL. “Every reactor comes with its own unique economic, social and even security context.”
Wind and solar currently supply only 5% of France’s power, and any strategy that throws out a quarter of its generation, supplied by nuclear, to be replaced by renewables is asking for trouble.
But where does this leave Britain?
Coal and gas are pretty much bit part players in France. Whereas nuclear runs at over 40GW all year, gas peaks at around 8GW in winter, so there seems little chance of it taking up the slack.
To make make matters worse, France is a net exporter of power to most of its neighbours.
At times of high demand and low supply, where will the axe fall? And at what price will any power be available at?
The cost of the interconnector is said to be about £500 million, and part of this will be recouped by via capacity market payments. These are what the National Grid will earn providing standby capacity.
On current projections, these could well generate annual payments of £25 million, assuming a price of £25/KW. Currently the government is offering contracts up to 15 years, but it is pretty certain that such payments will continue long after 2035.
It is quite possible that the National Grid will recover the whole capital cost from such subsidies.
On top of that, of course, it will be able to sell all of the electricity it imports.
No doubt this all makes for good business, as far as the Grid and its French partner RTE is concerned.
But if France seems determined to commit energy suicide, should the UK really be jumping off the cliff with it?
LOONY TUNES
Following Macron’s election in May, France’s Environment Ministry was renamed Le ministère de la Transition écologique et solidaire.
This translates as The Department of ecological and social Transition. So nothing to do with protecting the environment as such, and certainly nothing to do with energy.
If that was not bad enough, its minister is a certain Nicolas Hulot. According to Wikipedia:
Nicolas Hulot is a French journalist and environmental activist. He is the founder and president of the Fondation Nicolas Hulot, an environmental group established in 1990.
Sounds rather like an even pottier version of nutty George Monbiot.
I am pretty sure the French did not vote for this sort of eco loon lunacy.
But I am even surer the British did not either.
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August 5, 2017 at 03:57PM
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