Renewables continue to vastly outscale nuclear in China
The natural experiment keeps showing that nuclear is slow to build
I’ve been publishing assessments of the poor performance of nuclear compared to wind and solar in China for years (2014, 2019, 2021, 2022). My premise nine years ago was a first principles assertion with limited empirical results that wind and solar would radically outstrip nuclear in China. Why? Modularity reducing long-tailed risks, as Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, global expert and go to person for megaprojects, puts it in his new book How Big Things Get Done, where he includes my assessment of the natural experiment.
Subsequent assessments found that was true. Every year, the combination of wind and solar, and usually both individually, outstripped new nuclear generation, both in raw nameplate capacity and in additional TWh of annual generation. But as Professor Mark Z. Jacobson likes to remind us, it’s not WS, it’s WWS, that is wind, water, and solar. And so, today I spent a bit of time looking at hydroelectric generation capacity additions around the world since 2000, which turned out to be almost entirely in China. Of the 132.5 GW of new big hydroelectric projects connected to the grid in the world since 2000, 113 GW were in China. Unsurprising to anyone paying the slightest attention, but still, big numbers.
