By Jo Nova

The EU is fracturing over energy, and not a day too soon…

Signs of hope. Just as Germany recently pulled the pin on the EU’s Electric Vehicle mandate, France is now threatening to scupper the EU’s new Renewable Energy Directive unless they include a role for nuclear power. It was supposed to be signed off on Wednesday.  Despite nuclear being the only reliable baseload source of “Net Zero” energy, France has had to fight for it’s inclusion at every step.

France is gathering 16 European nations into a Nuclear Alliance

World Nuclear News:

France’s Minister for Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, brought together her counterparts from member countries of the Nuclear Alliance on 16 May at the Ministry for Energy Transition. A total of 16 countries were represented. In addition to the host country, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia and Sweden, plus Italy with observer status, were represented. The UK was present as a guest country.

“Nuclear power may provide up to 150 GW of electricity capacity by 2050 to the European Union (vs roughly 100 GW today),” the statement says. “This represents the equivalent of up to 30 to 45 new-build large reactors and small modular reactors in the EU and such new projects would also ensure that the current share of 25% electricity production be maintained in the EU for nuclear energy.”

Nuclear energy generates electricity in 14 of the 27 EU Member States, and currently provides 25% of Europe’s electricity and 50% of its low carbon electricity.

We know this matters because Team-Renewables are angry

Victor Jack, Politico

“France is crazy,” said a diplomat from one EU country, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about country dynamics, adding that there was “a lot” of anger at Paris “from all sides.”

BRUSSELS — Anger at France boiled over on Wednesday as EU countries accused Paris of taking a key piece of EU climate legislation “hostage” at the last minute to extract further concessions in the text.

EU ambassadors were due to sign off on the Renewable Energy Directive on Wednesday, an integral part of the bloc’s flagship Fit for 55 climate package that aims to slash greenhouse gases by 55 percent by 2030 and ramp up the share of renewables in the EU’s energy mix to 42.5 percent.

Ostensibly, France is asking for its industrial production of ammonia to be partially exempted from meeting green hydrogen targets, according to three diplomats. But that could also be a front for extracting further demands, including on nuclear, they said.

“This is the Renewable Energy Directive, not the Nuclear Energy Directive ” fumed one diplomat, apparently forgetting  that the aim was meant to be “low carbon”, not just jobs for the Renewables-Boys.

They’re supposed to be rescuing the world from CO2 aren’t they?

Thomas Brooke, ReMix

The Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear plant completed the transition from testing to regular output last month to become Finland’s first new nuclear plant in more than four decades. It is expected to produce up to 15 percent of the country’s power demand.

And while the plant’s production is still in its early days, its launch has had a considerable effect on Finland’s energy prices, lowering the electricity spot price in the country from €245.98 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in December to €60.55 per MWh in April, a reduction of more than 75 percent, according to physical electricity exchange, Nord Pool.

h/t to  @NetZeroWatch

 

From Climate Depot

Bloomberg: South Africa is ahead of its target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases. … Regular breakdowns of the coal-fired power plants that supply more than 80% of South Africa’s electricity mean that less carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere and daily rotational cuts of more than 10 hours a day are further limiting emissions from factories. 

“It’s unintentional,” Crispian Olver, the executive director of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday. “We reckon we are well within the range” of meeting the 2030 target, he said. …“It’s very difficult to recommend the decommissioning of power stations in the middle of an energy crisis.”

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Flashback 2011: We’re All North Koreans Now: ‘Era of Constant Electricity at Home is Ending, says UK power chief’ — ‘Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available’

Swiss president warns nation to prepare for electricity shortages lasting weeks or months

Major British Newspaper Promotes Bringing ‘Back Rationing’ to ‘Fix Global Warming’ – ‘Create a scarcity of fossil fuels’

By: Admin – Climate DepotMay 16, 2023 1:03 PM

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-05-15/south-africa-beats-climate-goal-as-blackouts-slash-emissions#xj4y7vzkg?leadSource=uverify%20wall

South Africa Beats Climate Goal as Blackouts Slash Emissions

• South Africa emissions are falling, ahead of a 2025 target
• Power plant breakdowns are reducing industrial activity

By Antony Sguazzin

May 15, 2023 at 10:10 AM EDT

South Africa is ahead of its target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Output of the climate-warming gases from the world’s 14th-biggest emitter is already falling even though its Nationally Determined Contribution, a target adopted by the cabinet in 2021, only forecast a decline from 2025.

Regular breakdowns of the coal-fired power plants that supply more than 80% of South Africa’s electricity mean that less carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere and daily rotational cuts of more than 10 hours a day are further limiting emissions from factories.

“It’s unintentional,” Crispian Olver, the executive director of South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission, said in an interview in Johannesburg on Monday. “We reckon we are well within the range” of meeting the 2030 target, he said.

South Africa aims to reduce its emissions to between 350 and 420 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, bettering a target set in 2015 of emitting between 398 and 614 megatons by that date. The 2021 goal was key to South Africa securing pledges of $8.5 billion in climate finance from some of the world’s richest nations.

If the decommissioning dates of some coal-fired plants are pushed back it will make little difference to emissions as they produce little electricity in any event, he said.

Keeping them open for another “year or two is neither here nor there,” Olver said on an earlier webinar. “It’s very difficult to recommend the decommissioning of power stations in the middle of an energy crisis.”

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Flashback: Rutgers U. Professor: ‘To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity’– David McDermott Hughes, Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and author of Energy without Conscience: “For a while, let’s eat a cold dinner here and there. Continuity costs too much. Climate change kills, and it kills vulnerable people first. Intermittency saves lives, and it saves vulnerable people first. Let the pause take its place in continuous climate activism…What applies in the pandemic also applies—and also with desperate urgency—in the climate crisis. We can live with some intermittency and rationing—at least until batteries and other forms of energy storage are up and running everywhere.”

Flashback 2011: We’re All North Koreans Now: ‘Era of Constant Electricity at Home is Ending, says UK power chief’ — ‘Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available’

The Daily Telegraph – March 2, 2011: ‘Era of Constant Electricity at Home is Ending, says UK power chief’

Excerpt: ‘The days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end, the head of the power network said yesterday. Families would have to get used to only using power when it was available, rather than constantly, said Steve Holliday, chief executive of National Grid. Mr Holliday was challenged over how the country would “keep the lights on” when it relied more on wind turbines as supplies of gas dwindled. Electricity provided by wind farms will increase six-fold by 2020 but critics complain they only generate on windy days.

…

“We are going to change our own behaviour and consume it when it is available and available cheaply.”

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Swiss president warns nation to prepare for electricity shortages lasting weeks or months

Major British Newspaper Promotes Bringing ‘Back Rationing’ to ‘Fix Global Warming’ – ‘Create a scarcity of fossil fuels’

British publication The Times ran one of the nuttiest bits of climate change babble in a Feb. 20 story headlined: “How to fix global warming? Bring back rationing, say scientists.” The first sentence of the piece dripped with brain-melting nonsense: “Second World War-style rationing of petrol, household energy and meat could help to fight climate change, British scientists have recommended.”

The newspaper cited “researchers” – whom it does not name until the end of the article – from the University of Leeds who published climate propaganda disguised as analysis in the journal Ethics, Policy & Environment. The Times quoted the study, which also suggested giving citizens a “carbon allowance” and creating a “scarcity of fossil fuels.” …

Of course, what The Times was selling was massive government intervention. “The researchers argue that, as a first step, governments would need to regulate sectors such as the oil industry, with the importing of fossil fuels ‘banned or restricted’ in certain areas.” In effect, said The Times, “[t]his would create a scarcity of fossil fuels, with rationing then introduced to ‘manage the scarcity’, they explain.”