Conca opined in mid-2023 that the recent increase in investments and in new designs for nuclear power is essential if energy growth estimates are even marginally correct. The world will achieve a consumption of well over 35 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (35 tkWh/yr) by midcentury, with about 5 tkWh/yr of that in the U.S. This growth is essential because humanity requires about 3,000 tkWh/yr per person to eradicate poverty, with the accompanying benefits of increased life span, decreased population growth, and decreased terrorism and war.
Unfortunately, we generally base decisions about what energy systems to emplace on cost, and if the costs are not favorable to specific strategic or political goals, then we try to adjust costs with subsidies, mandates, tax relief, reduced land leases, or other mechanisms that often shift costs from the ratepayer to the taxpayer, where they cannot easily be seen by the public. However, even these policies must be informed by the correct values for the costs of each energy source or they will not achieve their goals without a great deal of #nancial waste.
Conca presented an analysis of the direct costs of construction, operations and management (O&M), and fuel to produce energy from each primary energy source over the total life of those units: coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydro. These costs, unlike levelized costs, are the actual direct costs to produce electricity and are separate from investments, taxation, subsidies, mandates, loan structure, depreciation, and other costs associated more with pricing and financing than with what the actual costs are to produce that energy.
Read on ....
Conca concluded by indicating that there are many variables that can alter his conclusions, but they won’t alter them much. Putting wind in Tornado Alley obviously increases its capacity factor and lowers its direct costs, but the high-voltage transmission lines needed to bring that power to where it is needed, and the need to buffer the intermittency, will more than offset that savings.
Similarly for grid-scale solar. In the end, all will be for naught if we do not have a realistic national, and international, energy plan based on actual numbers.
Otherwise, we’re just singing in the wind.
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