Thanks for that. I am not anti renewables, and of course they have delivered emissions reductions. Wouldn’t it have been great if Germany had shut down coal instead of nuclear though, both in terms of CO2 but also human health (coal emissions are awful for lung problems and heart disease). You’re right renewables will have a huge place in the future energy market, but they’re not without their own environmental impacts like mining, land use and waste (who’s recycling solar panels?), intermittency, inability to manage frequency. Nuclear’s build-out time is actually much better than is assumed. Historically it has been the fastest way to decarbonise, and in places like China, S Korea and Middle East has been deployed really quickly in recent years. The West has forgotten how to construct nuclear so is relearning. Just like when we didn’t have experience of wind and solar, it was very expensive to build.

Renewables also bring a lot of “system costs” around grid resilience, energy storage, intermittency, frequency management….it’s complicated! You’re: working out true costs is difficult.

But basically, we need all the options on the table: efficiency, renewables and nuclear. Wouldn’t you agree?

PS those 2018 figures are for electrical generation, not consumption, as far as I can tell? One problem with wind and solar is they produce when you don’t want them, and don’t produce when you do want them. This is why Germany has to export electricity during peak wind/sun and import at other times. This is not a Europe-wide solution because if all the countries did the same the system would collapse.