Facts Matter.

[NNadir]

Here's an opinion piece from the former head of the Estonian Geological Survey who cofounded a company, Fermi Energia.

Viewpoint: Energy crisis demands quickly-scalable SMRs

In January 2019, I decided to quit my job as Deputy Director of the Estonian Geological Survey and incorporate a great team of Estonian nuclear engineering PhDs and a former CEO of our national power utility into our new company, Fermi Energia. The reason was that, from my own PhD studies, I became deeply convinced that Europe's climate policy and decarbonisation goal would lead to very high carbon prices and loss of competitiveness of fossil fuels...

...This year started with a new administration in the USA, which shortly after swearing in President Biden, re-entered the Paris Agreement on climate change. New pragmatic diplomacy combined with a joint push from the G7 meetings in June are now clearly impacting the future of coal generation, which is now in terminal decline. Even China is committed to climate neutrality, and coal power generation is in significant decline due to banks and investors being unwilling to finance new mines, plants and equipment providers.

But coal still dominates power generation and the naïve hope of displacement with renewables isn't supported by evidence. The reality of the switch to gas has driven up global gas demand and has led to the energy price crisis of 2021. Power retailer bankruptcies, industrial closures and energy poverty are the new reality that the nuclear industry has long warned the European decision makers about.

This is a significant mid-term problem as the quantity of coal power generation is 8735 TWh globally. In the EU, we still burn about 250 million tonnes of coal annually for power. In comparison, China burns 400 million tonnes of coal for district heat with the national aim to switch to cleaner fuels. Thus, the demand for gas will be very, very strong for decades, creating a very supportive investment environment for nuclear energy, with power prices potentially remaining well above EUR80/MWh for the period of high gas demand. Price of power in Western Europe as of 7 October this year, prior to the closure of three German nuclear power plants, reached EUR302/MWh. Many industries are about to shut down. Political ramifications are about to unfold...

I bolded the sentence containing the words, "...the naïve hope of displacement with renewables isn't supported by evidence."

Facts matter.

So called "renewable energy" has always been nothing more than lipstick on the dangerous natural gas pig, and now the pig owns the world.

We hear a lot that so called "renewable energy" has been killing coal, but now coal prices are following gas prices and going through the roof.

U.K. Turns to Coal as Low Wind Output Increases Power Prices

The decline of coal is entirely a function of the rise of gas, and nothing else.

Gas is not clean; it is not "green." It's a dangerous fossil fuel, and it is becoming clear that it can't keep this big lie, the one about how so called "renewable energy" will save the world, from exposing the obvious reality, reality reflected in the rapidly rising, first and second derivative, concentrations of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere.

There is no good reason for energy poverty or the destruction of the planetary atmosphere other than the lies we tell ourselves. It is not true that "nuclear energy is 'too dangerous'" but climate change isn't "too dangerous."

Let's be clear: Our reliance on fantasy rather than facts is quite literally killing the planet, quickly.