Green Tech, Covid-19 Hit Nuclear Power: Bloomberg
As electricity demand declined across the world due to Covid-19 lockdowns and economic contraction, renewable energies have taken a bigger share of the global energy market after many nations decided to give green technologies priority on the grid. The pandemic worsened the outlook for nuclear power stations, already struggling to break even. For many years, atomic reactors in Europe coexisted happily with other kinds of energy stations. Demand was sufficient, and nuclear station investors recovered initial investments after decades of operation. However, earlier this century, German Chancellor Angela Merkel launched her so-called Energiewende to subsidize green power and other countries followed, reshaping energy economics and giving solar and wind energy a major role. According to the International Energy Agency, global power consumption could decline as much as 5 percent this year, the biggest plunge since the Great Depression. With low electricity prices and high operation costs, eight US nuclear stations have closed since 2013 and at least four more are scheduled to close permanently by 2025. – YaleGlobal
Green Tech, Covid-19 Hit Nuclear Power: Bloomberg
Heavily subsidized green energy and plunged demand from the Covid-19 pandemic force nuclear stations, already struggling to break even, to go dark
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Read the article from Bloomberg about challenges for the nuclear energy industry from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lars Paulsson is the leader of Power & Gas-EMEA team at Bloomberg.
Rachel Morison is the energy markets and utilities reporter at Bloomberg.
Read Global Energy Review 2020 from the International Energy Agency report: "Lockdown measures have significantly reduced electricity demand, affecting in turn the power mix. Increases in residential demand were far outweighed by reductions in commercial and industrial operations.... Demand reductions have lifted the share of renewables in electricity supply, as their output is largely unaffected by demand. Demand fell for all other sources of electricity, including coal, gas and nuclear power."
Bloomberg
©2020 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved