Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson and Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown have come out in support of nuclear energy as a big part of the eventual IRP, but critics have warned that nuclear energy’s inclusion will be a political decision and not based on scientific fact.
The Mace report recommended that the “annual new-build limits for solar PV and wind should be removed” from the base case assumptions, Levington revealed.
“This unconstrained scenario … re-run with correct solar PV and wind cost assumptions, should form the least-cost base case of IRP 2016,” it explained.
“Step by step constraints or policy adjustments scenarios (for example annual new-build limits for solar PV and wind) should also be financially modelled and the total cost per year of such constrained scenarios compared with the revised least-cost Base Case to assess the cost effectiveness of such interventions,” it said.
The Mace committee said nuclear energy is not a least-cost option in the current 2010 IRP.
“In IRP 2010, nuclear was not the least-cost option,” they said. “It was a policy decision to include nuclear in the plan to cater for uncertainties around the forecasted cost reduction of renewables, as at the time it was unclear whether they would materialise in the magnitude and as quickly as anticipated in the IRP 2010.
“These adjustments led to the model building nuclear under very specific constraints, where the amount of required CO2-neutral electricity could not be supplied entirely by renewables because of these annual new-build limits.”
Looking ahead, it said a “least cost IRP model, free of any artificial constraints and before any policy adjustments, does not include any new nuclear power generators”.
“The optimal least cost mix is one of solar PV, wind and flexible power generators (with relatively low utilisation).”…….. http://www.fin24.com/Economy/energy-ministers-advisers-reveal-why-nuclear-should-be-dumped-20161207
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