u/HairyPossibility

Germany blew up two nuclear cooling towers and had a 700 MWh battery under construction four days later. France just set a regulatory floor to keep nuclear power on the grid even when nobody wants it.

While Germany decommissions plants and repurposes the sites for storage, France spent this summer cutting nuclear output by 4 to 6+ GW across repeated heatwaves, over a tenth of national demand at points, because rivers ran too warm to safely cool the reactors. That's happened in 2022, 2023, 2025, and 2026. But heat isn't the only thing France is throttling for. Solar capacity nearly doubled from 16 GW in 2022 to over 30 GW in 2025, and on sunny days generation now regularly exceeds what the grid needs once nuclear baseload is accounted for. The result: nearly 3 TWh of renewable power curtailed in 2025, almost double 2024, with solar taking the brunt of it.

Here's the protectionism part. In March 2026, France's energy regulator approved an agreement between grid operator RTE and EDF setting a minimum output level for nuclear generation. EDF keeps selling that output onto the day-ahead market "at any price," even when prices go negative, which they now do in over 90% of April days. So instead of flexing nuclear down when solar floods the grid at midday, France is flexing solar down to protect nuclear's market share. That's not a technical constraint. That's a policy choice to keep sunk-cost reactors running full tilt and make newer, cheaper generation absorb the cutbacks instead.

Compare the build economics on top of that. Gundremmingen's replacement battery: about 230 million euros, groundbreaking days after demolition, reusing existing grid infrastructure. France's EPR2 program: tens of billions of euros, over a decade of construction, and a track record of slipping deadlines going back to Flamanville. Germany bet on the option that gets built fast and gets out of its own way. France is spending both money and grid capacity defending an asset it already sunk the cost into.

Check out the full story https://interestingengineering.com/energy/germany-detonates-dead-nuclear-plant

In 2025, the world installed 814 GW of new solar and wind capacity, compared with just 158 GW of gross fossil (coal + gas + oil).

"The 2025 build alone adds enough clean capacity to replace roughly one-seventh of global gas generation, and helped renewables overtake coal in global electricity production for the first time. These trends have not slowed in 2026."

When “King Coal or King Solar?” ran in The Conversation back in 2012, we argued that the real contest was in new capacity, not in the legacy fleet.

Fourteen years on, our updated chart shows how decisively that bet has paid off: In 2025 the world installed 814 GW of new solar and wind, compared with just 158 GW of gross fossil (coal + gas + oil) and only about 131 GW of net fossil once fossil retirements are counted. https://reneweconomy.com.au/chart-of-the-day-farewell-king-coal-long-live-king-solar-and-wind-and-batteries/

And this leads to Less oil..

The countries leading EV adoption are almost identical to the countries with the cleanest grids, and that's not a coincidence. Norway hit 92% EV market share in 2024, Sweden 58%, Denmark 56%, Finland 50%. What do they share? Norway generates over 95% of its electricity from hydropower, making the carbon footprint of driving an EV there exceptionally low. Norwegian EVs are effectively charged on 100% carbon-free, low-cost electricity. China tells the same story at scale: wind and solar electricity generation rose 25% in 2024, and clean energy growth accounted for 84% of all electricity demand growth that year. Meanwhile China hit 48% EV market share in 2024. The mechanism is straightforward: a green grid lowers the real-world carbon cost of EV ownership, reduces consumer hesitation, keeps running costs down, and creates a policy feedback loop where governments committed to renewables are also committed to electrifying transport. The grid isn't a footnote to EV adoption. It's the prerequisite.

Norway's 98% renewable grid as explicit EV policy enablerhttps://www.axios.com/the-lessons-of-norways-rapid-electric-vehicle-adoption-76a5c43b-8c6b-4760-9ec8-0b5564153de5.html