Nuclear, the cheapest option to make Belgium climate neutral by 2050
The combination of new small nuclear reactors and an increase in offshore wind power is the least profitable option to make Belgium climate neutral by 2050 without, at the same time, reducing the sails industry in Belgium. This is revealed by a study by EnergyVille commissioned by Febeliec, the federation of large industrial energy consumers in Belgium. Energyville, a research center including the universities of Leuven (KU Leuven) and Hasselt and major research institutes in the north of the country, has analyzed a number of scenarios over the past few months with a view to ensuring neutrality Belgium’s climate by 2050. The objective was to examine the energy system in its entirety (industry, buildings, transport, electricity, agriculture) and to identify, while respecting technological neutrality, the best scenarios for achieving the 2050 climate objectives at the lowest cost while guaranteeing security of supply. One of the fundamental assumptions of the study is that the industrial output between today and 2050 will not change, underlines Febeliec.
The federation now hopes that the government will use this study in its future energy choices, keeping “all technology options“open and doing”most economical choice“.
The message that emerges, according to Febeliec, is that the new nuclear capacity was working strongly on the average cost of energy in 2050. This is also shown in the EnergyVille tables: in the scenario with nuclear capacity, alongside additional investments in solar and wind, the average cost would be 56.49 euros per MWh. In the two cases without nuclear energy, it would be 84.49 euros or 108.15 euros.
The least expensive scenario, that of electrification, foresees almost 6 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity by 2050, more than what is currently available at Doel and Tihange. It also includes access to an additional 16 gigawatts of offshore wind power.
In the more destined scenarios, without nuclear energy, green molecules, among others, played a more important role and more energy would have to be imported.
The energy sector, however, is undergoing profound change, especially since the start of the war in Ukraine, the researchers acknowledged. They tried to take this into account but had to rely on a number of uncertain predictions concerning, for example, the evolution of the price of gas. The cost price of new nuclear reactors, called “small modular reactors” (PRM or SMR in English), has also not yet been fully clarified, but the researchers say they have calculated broadly.