RTE scenarios: nuclear will not be enough |Economic alternatives

The manager of the RTE electricity transport network published its study of alternatives on Monday for our future energy system on Monday.With the target of carbon neutrality in 2050, electricity which represents only a quarter of our final energy consumption today will count there for 55 %.New less carbon uses will take place there: the electric vehicle, the production of hydrogen for the industry, or the heat pumps.The efficiency of these systems, combined with sobriety measures will make it possible to divide almost by two energy consumption and electricity consumption, today around 450 TWh/year, could then rise to 650 TWh/year.

This study, which focuses on the electrical system, does not happen by chance.These new uses of electricity and the aging of the nuclear fleet, however low carbon, impose strong decisions.Built almost entirely between 1975 and 1990, he has 35 years of average age and no one can say what extensions will be possible without problem beyond 50, or even 60 years.

Closing a low carbon and profitable power plant too early is problematic, but not sufficiently anticipating a need for replacement is even more so.Especially since even by passing on the singular causes of the failure of the EPR of Flamanville, it must be recognized that our industrial capacity to build is no longer that of the 1970s, and that part of the nuclear industrywill be relatively busy in the coming years to operate and renovate the current park.

50/50 nuclear and renewable energies

Even by making decisions today, there will not be outside Flamanville, new EPR connected to the network before 2035.In the longer term, if an extension at 60 is possible for certain power plants, we can consider replacing the entire power of the nuclear fleet, or 63 GW.We are talking here about the equivalent of 40 EPR, but there could be small reactors - the Small Modular Reactors (SMR) - around 2040, if these small power plants hold their promises.

This full renewal of the park implies construction and closure rhythms that must be examined carefully.In such a scenario, we would have a little more than half of our electricity produced with nuclear power instead of three quarters currently.The remaining half would be mainly obtained from renewable energies, which still involves significant development, now to support the growth of electricity consumption, with a multiplication by two of the rhythm of installation of photovoltaic power plants and a maintenanceof that of wind.

That self-proclaimed experts in free opposition to renewable energies (ENR) explain to us, with calculations as precise as those of RTE, how they could do without it.An alternative to this 50/50 scenario is to have less nuclear and more.Note that depending on the place that enrits variables take, they must be completed by more or less flexibility means: production from renewable gas (hydrogen or biogas), storage, demand management and demand andInterconnections, so that everyone is sure to have electricity during a cold winter night in the middle of a few days without wind.

This is precisely the type of analysis that RTE does with very advanced methods, on hundreds of weather scenarios, taking into account the effects of climate change.The study also incorporates the costing of network costs.Rte is responsible for the balance of the system and the least we can say is that it is not used to deciding without measuring the risks taken as precisely as possible.

Six scenarios under study

To analyze these alternatives to 2050, the six scenarios are considered.The common denominator of the first three, N1, N2 and N03 is the construction of new EPRs (in 2050: eight for N1 and fourteen more SMRs for N03), and an extension of the current park at 2050 (fifteen reactors in N1 and 20in N03).The N03 scenario, the most ambitious for nuclear, aims at 50 GW of long -term nuclear, and should allow in the long term to keep 50 % its share in the electric mix, with a rate of development which intensifies in 2040 to 2GW/year.It is presented by EDF as a higher limit of what can be asked for the nuclear industry.

In the other three scenarios, the "m", we do not build an EPR but only renewables, while extending the nuclear park (fifteen reactors in 2050 in the M23), except in the M0.In the latter case, the most committed of these 100 % ENR scenarios, the average development rate must be multiplied by seven for photovoltaics and two for wind on earth.Given the difficulties that we encounter today in terms of acceptability, as much to say that these rhythms are daring, even that it may be risky to count on it.

Beyond the demonstration of the technical feasibility of all these scenarios, the results of the study allow an estimate of the economic and environmental cost of each of them.For the environmental cost, all these scenarios are compatible with carbon neutrality with very low emissions.Environmental analysis does not stop there and includes the materials used, waste, etc..All the scenarios mentioned have relatively close economic costs, in order of magnitude around 60 to 80 billion on average per year, against 45 to date.

Brought back to what will be consumed, which will also be increasing, this gives electricity to 110 euros /MWh excluding tax around 2060 against 100 euros /MWh today.This increase is low in view of what we are going to save by zero our consumption of crude oil and natural gas which cost us, in 2019 around 35 billion euros in imports.The most committed scenario on renewables is 15 % more expensive than the N1 scenario, which is itself 10 % more expensive than the N03 at 59 billion.These differences are not tall in view of the uncertainty on the future cost hypotheses of each technology.Rather, they should make us understand that the question is not so economic, but rather political and environmental.

The real constraint on all the sectors relates to the development rhythms.In this sense, given the importance of the nuclear sector in the French economic, industrial and social landscape, it seems to me just to relaunch nuclear with some EPR2, to keep the "n" scenarios within our reach.However, be content with the level of development of the N03 for the ENR risks closing the doors of the N1 and N2, and the N03 is based on certain bets on which we will not settle immediately - an extension of the history60 years and rhythm of commissioning of 2 GW/year from 2040.

Mobilization of all actors

By 2035, it is therefore necessary to revive the first six or eight first EPR2 and to win on the ENR the rhythm of development of the N1: 3 GW/year of photovoltaic, 1 GW/year of wind and a little more1 GW/year of wind on earth.This is almost what is in the multi -year energy programming (PPE) and which allows you to reach 50 % ENR in the electric mix in 2035.If on this date we observe that the EPR2 projects end in time and at the cost announced, if part of the nuclear power plants in the current park can indeed be extended, if the SMR hold their promises, then the French will be able to choose to slow down the rhythmENR development for the benefit of nuclear power with N03.

There is nothing really surprising or radically new in broad outline of these results.Nothing which, in orders of magnitude, has already been said earlier by experts in the field.What is radically unprecedented is above all the fact that the manager of the French transport network, RTE, is the main author of the calculations, but also the method used.

On the one hand, this method has mobilized whole teams of RTE and external experts on advanced calculations for several years.On the other, large -scale public consultation has been set up, from the start to the end of the project, to discuss the hypotheses, the chosen scenarios, the methods used.It has mobilized all actors in the field: state policies and services, industrialists, associations and more generally civil society.

We can hope that this study brings back a little calm in a debate where the dishonesty and simplism of the detractors of the variables have taken much more room than scientific and rigorous analysis.The result is a loss of essential benchmarks on these questions and the disappearance of the craze for a necessary transition.This reversal is unfortunately exploited in the presidential debate by certain unconscious policies of the realities that RTE exposes us.

Hopefully this study makes it possible to go beyond the sterile and simplistic cleavages which have become legion and which make us waste time and precious energy.What we need is not just a project is gaining against another is to make a company around a clear and coherent project.

Robin Girard is a teacher-researcher in Mines-Paristech, energy specialist.