alt Hacker NewsThe world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year. New nuclear sucks, and baseload is a false concept that can (and is) being synthetically replicated with over-building + storage + transmission + peaking.
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Firm/dispatchable capacity that can run for arbitrary durations is required unless you've solved seasonal storage.
https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(18)30386-6
Firm low-carbon resources consistently lower decarbonized electricity system costs
• Availability of firm low-carbon resources reduces costs 10%–62% in zero-CO2 cases
• Without these resources, electricity costs rise rapidly as CO2 limits near zero
• Batteries and demand flexibility do not substitute for firm low-carbon resources
> The world's biggest industrial economy, China, installed about 300x more renewable energy than nuclear last year.
Comparing nameplate capacity for generation methods with much different capacity factors is misleading. China generates the majority of its electricity from coal, and is still adding more. They're adding more in renewables than coal by nameplate capacity, but coal likewise has a higher capacity factor than renewables, so it's really about the same. Then they say "increasing the proportion of renewables" because the initial proportion of renewables was close to 0.
Coal is a baseload source but not one you actually want to use.