their energy is vastly cheaper.
"Offshore windfarm operators will sell power for as little as £37.35 per megawatt hour, 5.8% below the lowest bid in the most recent auction in 2019."
If developed over a large area, there is pretty sure to be wind, or sun, or tides, or waves, somewhere.
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This is a common misconception. A prime example is the deep freeze in the winter of 2010. We had minimal sun, and very little wind for weeks.
Press Red - a blog about the TV Platforms group who build and maintain the BBC's red button services, including the TV version of BBCiPlayer.
www.bbc.co.uk
We could not rely on wind and solar, or wave during these times. This tells us that we would need huge storage, to point of completely uneconomic, to provide a constant supply during such times.
Like I said, nuclear provides a baseload supply, which is a different supply to what wind and solar provide. It is therefore not comparable.
Contract price is nearly 6% lower than previous auction in 2019, which could ease pressure on energy bills
www.theguardian.com
as for getting energy from Africa, I guess you aren't aware of the gas that Europe imports.
Dependency on Russia didn't work out well, did it?
Is Saudi stable and reliable?
We have been importing gas from Qatar on occasion, and it can get diverted enroute.
But we don't generally import from Saudi or N.Africa.
But even if we did, it would be occasional shipments, which would be put in storage. Connecting a developed country to N.Africa for electricity is a risky approach. As you said, Russia wasn't a terribly good idea for gas/oil was it.
It might be better than Desertec, which just wanted to build huge solar farms in the Sahara for European countries. Ie. if you built plenty for local populations first, but again, that would just add to the cost. And again, you would need uneconomically big storage if you even thought about using it for baseload supply.
I say all of this, as someone who's home town benefits from off-shore wind. We have a factory next to teh dock, sending them out regularly, and I just drove part the Doggerbank convertor. I'm fine with having plenty of renewables, but they have their limits.
Also, nuclear power is safer than all of the above.
Anyway.... Putin, what a ****.
We need low carbon energy in the long term, and no one here has come up with any reason not to use nuclear. The UK needs it, and needs far more than what we are currently building.
Indirect mercenaries maybe.
