Also, it doesn't include the number of hours needed to find and debate a place where you can actually put down renewables.
Places using the most power (those most densely populated, like the Netherlands where I come from) have enough space for nuclear reactors to keep the country running (if base load was all we needed; it's just for comparison). However, if we need to do it all renewable, we're going to be hard-pressed and perhaps dependent on other countries. It's always someone's back yard or a nature reserve and people are almost always going to protest it. Germany has certainly more space so it's not as if we need to bring it all the way up from Spain or even Africa, but is by no means as sparsely populated as the USA (232/km² in Germany vs 34/km² in the USA). The USA also gets way more sun than most of western Europe. I'm not saying "you have it all easy" but... you're definitely in an easier position to make it work.
Today we might import power because it's cheaper, but we can build another coal or nuclear plant and produce that 10% we're currently importing. Building enough solar panels or wind turbines, on the other hand, to produce 1093TWh/year (2014 figure) is going to be difficult. Even if it's only about electricity and we keep on heating with oil and driving oil-powered cars, we need 112TWh/year (2014) of electricity.
Yes, we're building wind turbine farms in sea, but "we're hoping that'll get us from 14% to 16% renewable energy by 2023"[1]. It's more than a rounding error, but not by much.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_the_Netherlands
* https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.... (US Energy Information Administration; see Table 1b & Table 2 on page 7 & 8)
* https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... (UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy; see Table 6 on page 29)
I hear you regarding regional and national concerns, but if anything I think that reinforces another argument for renewables: they are relatively easy to construct and decommission over shorter timescales if political and local pressure demands it, compared to nuclear power plants which could become long-term causes of disgruntlement if misplaced.
My hope would be that groups of countries see energy provision as a shared problem that they can co-operate on (in the true sense of a shared grid), so that potential reliance on energy import if needed in the Netherlands wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. I'd imagine (and would be interested to know if) the Netherlands is relatively advanced in terms of home and business energy efficiency and would have plenty to offer there in return.
I don't agree with everything you wrote, but your comment showed as downvoted and I don't get that. Your comment definitely contributes to the discussion, so at least have an upvote from me.
So what I'm seeing in those tables is (taking the UK 2025 central expectation, converting pounds to USD):
UK US UK US
nuclear 123 75 baseline
wind sea 130 122 0.9x 0.6x
wind land 79 40 1.6x 1.9x
solar 82 33 1.5x 2.3x
hydro n/a 53 n/a 1.4x
Even if it assumes zero time is spent arguing over where to put each wind and solar farm and that there is no downside to losing the physical space it's built on, 2x the cost is a large difference so I see how it makes financial sense to try going for renewable energy.
> My hope would be that groups of countries see energy provision as a shared problem that they can co-operate on (in the true sense of a shared grid)
That's already the case. See the map on the right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...
> I hear you regarding regional and national concerns, but if anything I think that reinforces another argument for renewables: they are relatively easy to construct and decommission over shorter timescales if political and local pressure demands it
I'm not concerned that my national government will not align with my regional interests. My "regional and national concerns" are that it's nigh impossible to produce enough renewable energy with the physical space we have in the Netherlands. I'm all for nuclear, and I'm also fine importing renewable energy from Germany, Norway, and/or the UK (what are the odds that they all decide to screw us over at the same time? So that should be fine). We just have to realize what the consequences are of phasing out nuclear energy: dependence and delaying the transition by waiting for other countries to do it for us.
We need our neighbours to do a large effort on our behalf in finding places where people are okay with having solar/wind/hydro so that they can export it to us, and most of that effort could be avoided if we weren't antsy about paying more money for our energy for the benefit of making big steps in transitioning away form coal and gas.
It's probably too late by now. Even if tomorrow everyone woke up and decided nuclear is shiny technology to expand, it would take too long. But we're also too late starting on renewable energy, so the question is: which is the better option?
Option 1: mix 50% renewable power with 50% nuclear and be sure that energy production is nearly CO2-neutral when those plants are built in 15 years. Bam, done. From there, we can start to replace the nuclear part with renewable energy (either by helping or kindly asking other countries to build it in their space and sell the resulting power to us, or find more efficient ways to do it locally). Note that we'll still need to do a huge effort to achieve 50% renewable energy in the first place, so this is not the easy way out. It's a hard way, but maybe-realistic way. In 15 years, the earth will have warmed up more than it should have, but what's the alternative? Well:
Option 2: do our best on renewable energy and win thousands of fights with local communities and nature preservation organisations, while asking neighbouring countries to kindly produce a decent chunk of our electricity need in a sustainable fashion (while they're also trying to turn old power plants off, it's not as if they have capacity to spare). Hopefully we'll get to be nearly CO2-neutral at some point, maybe in a few decades? It's hard to say.
> I'd [be] interested to know if the Netherlands is relatively advanced in terms of home and business energy efficiency
I honestly can't say. We're doing better than the USA but that's not difficult. So far as I can tell, it's not more advanced than any other western European country. Having lived about 10% of my life in Belgium and 10% in Germany, and having had long holidays in France, the Netherlands feels five to ten years ahead of those countries in many ways. While the details of that feeling are a topic for another time, I don't think we're doing better in terms of energy efficiency.
> if political and local pressure demands it
Local demands can go screw themselves. East Germany has a higher nazi quota than west Germany but we're not saying "oh that's alright, you go ahead and send the black people in your area back to where they came from, make gay marriage illegal again, etc. Local power for the win!".
Locally, nationally, and internationally we're not doing what's in our own best interest, long-term. I don't mean nuclear power, I mean becoming CO2-neutral in any way. Thirty years ago we were pretty sure what was going on and we did absolutely nothing; ten years ago we were pretty damn sure the climate was already changing and noticed a huge extinction event on our hands and we figured we should get started; today it's absolutely certain that we're facing an existential issue, kids are out on the streets every friday telling us to do something, and what are we doing? Debating whether we really want to pay 38ct/kWh instead of 25ct/kWh by adding 50% nuclear into the mix. Oh yeah, and the USA decided they don't need to participate, it's not profitable in the short term or something. Other countries be like "sure that's fine, you have your own opinions and twice the pollution per capita of the rest of us. That's perfectly fine, this changes absolutely nothing in our relationship."