Michael Edesess’ uncritical review of Hannah Ritchie’s book on energy transition fails to back up their shared opinions on important issues:
1. Levelised cost of energy comparisons of energy technologies are not “flawed” when used and interpreted correctly; they are the standard method in electric power engineering.
2. World leading research groups on the energy transition, such as LUT and Stanford, recognise the land-use limitations of large-scale bioenergy and therefore do not include it in their scenarios.
3. Nuclear power failed to grow beyond its maximum global generation in 2006 because it’s too expensive, too dangerous, too slow to build and too inflexible in operation to be a good partner for variable wind and solar. Its percentage contribution has dropped from the peak of 17.5% in 1996 to 9.15% in 2023, for good reasons.
4. The notion that a major accident at a nuclear power station “killed no one” is based on the fiction that no cancers are induced. Experts at the International Agency for Research on Cancer estimated 16,000 cancer deaths in Europe from the Chernobyl disaster.
5. Although “poor countries are going to need fossil fuels to develop”, many are already shifting to small-scale solar electricity.