Solarcentury chairman, Jeremy Leggett, says the nuclear industry is now dying
Two of the UK PV industry’s most high profile figures have spoken in praise of Germany’s reported solar output world record.
According to the Institute of the Renewable Energy Industry (IWR) in Muenster, 22GW of solar power was fed into Germany’s national grid per hour on Saturday – equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear power stations.
Solarcentury chairman and PV campaigner Jeremy Leggett used the opportunity to criticise the nuclear agenda by exclusively telling Renewable Energy Installer: “If I were working in the nuclear industry, I would be very nervous.
“This real data comes on top of the estimates of (global consultancy firm) McKinsey & Company earlier this month: 1,000 GW of economic solar PV potential globally by 2020. I think this kind of thing, on top of their innate failures means nuclear is dying now.”
Southern Solar’s managing director, Howard Johns, added: “Germany’s achievements show what is possible with real visionary leadership. A fantastic step on the path to 100% renewable energy. It also illustrates what could be possible if conditions were right in the UK.”
Working in both solar and nuclear I take a more balanced view, solar has its place, but so has Nuclear, they are both good low carbon energy sources. Some facts to balance the misleading comments on Nuclear, one of the Wylfa nuclear reactors in Wales recently shut down after 40 years of successful generation. During this time it produced 224 Terawatt hours of energy. Allowing for the fact that a domestic 4 kWp solar PV system will produce 3,300kwh a year of valuable energy, if you divide Wylfa’s life time output by 40 and then again by 3,300 kWh you will see that you will need circa 1.69million domestic installations to create the same power. So while it’s great that solar is making a difference, lets not knock Nuclear which produces energy day or night at less than 3 pence per unit. The new reactors by the way come in pairs and are rated at 1.6 Gigga Watts each, they run non stop apart from planned outages every few years, so 22 GWP of installed solar in the UK equates to less than 2/3 of the output of a modern nuclear reactor per year.
Before any grumbles about nuclear waste, please can someone tell me the carbon impact of the circa 110 million solar panels the germans will inevitably had to use to generate that power and how they intend to get rid of the pannels at the end of life. Aluminium is very bad from a carbon perspective and when I am putting up solar panels which I obviously agree with otherwise I wouldn’t be in the business, I am concerned about the anti-nuclear drive which feels irrational. Bizarely the aluminium I mentioned earlier may well have been smelted using either Nuclear or Coal power. Come on lets look at the big picture, solar wont keep the lights on in winter.
Having just read my submission I thought it was a bit of a rant so I looked up the McKinsey article which actually points out the huge carbon cost of closing down Nuclear plants early, it also points out that the majority of German CO2 reduction since 1990 has been due to improving the insulation on communist built houses… “The other possibility involves nuclear power, which Germany has decided to phase out by 2025. There is a strong popular consensus to stand by that decision. Our analysis shows that if the German people and their leaders decided to delay the phaseout, an additional 90 million tons of greenhouse gases4 could be abated by 2020, without extra costs. Combined with the 195 million tons achieved in the 31 percent scenario, delaying the phaseout of nuclear power could reduce emissions by 38 percent from the 1990 level. The cost would be about €4.5 billion a year lower than that of the basic scenario described in this article.” Interestingly McKinsey said nothing about Solar see for yourself https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Cutting_carbon_not_economic_growth_Germanys_path_2104
I have no doubt that Solar power is great, but oversell