Arguments
Have renewables decreased electricity prices: European edition
Posted on 28 July 2025 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
We’ve been posting a lot recently about how renewables lower electricity costs. Last week, Zeke posted about the impact of renewables on U.S. electricity prices. In response to that, several people pointed us to a figure that seems to show something different:
The plot shows a clear correlation between retail cost of electricity and the fraction of renewable energy for many countries around the world.
So does this mean that renewable energy actually raises the price of electricity?
Confirmation
First, I wanted to verify the figure, so I downloaded the data for Europe and plotted retail price vs. renewable fraction (the fraction of electricity produced by wind and solar):
This closely resembles Figure 1, confirming that the legitimacy of the correlation in the original plot.
But … the world of science is littered with the corpses of scientific analyses that assumed correlation proves causality. It does not.
a better calculation
Figs. 1 and 2 plot the retail price, which includes many things besides the cost of generating power. It also includes network costs (transmission and distribution) and taxes + fees.
A better analysis would use the cost of generating power in order to isolate the impact of renewables. We can get a better estimate of that by using the wholesale price of electricity:
The plot also shows that the cost of generation is generally a small part of the total cost of electricity.
it’s the price of natural gas, stupid
This lack of correlation is expected given how wholesale energy markets price electricity. In countries that utilize wholesale power markets, it is the most expensive generator that sets the wholesale price. This is almost always a natural gas generator.
Thus, the wholesale price of electricity is mainly determined by the price of natural gas. This relationship can be illustrated by plotting Germany’s wholesale electricity prices against natural gas prices over the past decade:
Next time someone says, “Germany installed a lot of wind and solar and it’s electricity prices skyrocketed,” you can let them know that was a consequence of increases in the price of natural gas.
Every country in Europe has a similar regression, as do many other markets, such as ERCOT.
why do we see a correlation between retail price and renewable fraction
Given this, why is there a correlation in Figs. 1 and 2 between cost and renewable fraction? We know it’s not due to the wholesale price, leaving network costs (e.g., transmission) and taxes + fees.
My hypothesis is that the correlation stems from wealthier countries having both higher renewable adoption and higher tax rates on electricity.
Consider Denmark, for example. It plays a key role in the regression in Figs. 1 and 2 by having both very high price and also high renewable fraction, thereby anchoring one end of the regression.
But Fig. 3 shows that its wholesale price of power is the same as everywhere else. The explanation is that Denmark’s high electricity costs stem primarily from taxes, which comprise 41% of the retail price.
Conversely, countries with very low retail prices are typically developing nations or major oil producers, which have few renewable generators and also heavily subsidize electricity costs.
conclusions
tl;dr: Climate misinformers want you to believe that correlation shows causality, but a deeper investigation shows that renewables do not appear to be increasing the cost of energy generation.
This makes sense since electricity costs on today’s grids are mainly set by the price of natural gas. Taxes also can have a big impact on retail prices.
All of the actual evidence we have is that adding renewables reduces the cost of electricity.
I just received my monthly electricity bill this morning. Delivery, regulatory fees, and taxes are roughly 1/3 of the total. Electricity cost varies with time-of-day - at the low overnight rates, delivery, regulatory fees, and tax are very simlar to the actual electricity cost.
I think it is a good idea for Skeptical Science to post articles on how renewables can cheaply power the world.
Most deniers have stopped claiming that it is not warming. They have shifted to claiming renewable energy can't work. Skeptical Science is a good place to address these claims.
The Climate Brink has a lot of good posts on Climate and renewable energy.
Since natural gas is so expensive, then why doesn't Germany use less natural gas (and coal for that matter)? France uses hardly any fossil fuels and their electricity rates are cheaper than Germany. See Germany electricity production for the last 12 months here. See France electricity production for the last 12 months here. See EU electricity prices here. Annalisa Manera, prof at ETH-Zurich comments on German electricity pricing here.
[BL] You are skating on very thin ice. Rhetorical questions do not represent reasonable discussion. If you can't be bothered to try to answer your own questions, then why should others do your work for you? (Hint: they shouldn't.)
And the Comments Policy contains the following text:
No link or picture only. Any link or picture should be accompanied by text summarizing both the content of the link or picture, and showing how it is relevant to the topic of discussion. Failure to do both of these things will result in the comment being considered off topic.
You have provided four links in three lines of text, without giving anything beyond a vague indication of what you expect people to see in those links. We can't read your mind, so we can't tell just what sort of evidence you want us to find, let lone what question you are trying to address. You have been warned about this before.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
Tder2012:
The OP shows that wholesale electric prices are similar in Franch and Germany. This shows that renewable energy is not more expensive than fossil and nuclear energy. Did you read the OP?? The OP provides data that show your claims are completely false.
The French electric company is bankrupt since they lose money on their nuclear electric sales. They close many reactors on the weekends since their electricity is too expensive to sell. They have artificially low retail prices to make voters think nuclear power is a good deal.
Germany should focus mostly on their citizens' health and not as much about cost. They definitely should not be seen as an example to follow to decarbonize the electricity grid. "The German nuclear phaseout may have caused up to thousands of excess deaths annually according to several studies.
[Large snip]
It’s no secret that the phaseout was a disaster. But when you start digging into the real-world consequences, that’s when reality really hits.
Over the past decade, several researchers have tried to quantify the consequences. One topic that keeps coming up is how many people have died as a result of coal replacing nuclear.
Most studies agree that the number is in the hundreds or thousands per year, but they reach that conclusion in different ways.
Some, like Jarvis et al. (2022) and Núñez-Mujica et al. (2025), model the increase in coal emissions, run those through atmospheric dispersion models, and apply dose-response functions to estimate the health impact. Their numbers land around 725 to 800 excess deaths per year.
Neidell et al. (2021) take a different route. They look at reduced electricity consumption following the phaseout and estimate over 1,100 additional deaths per year linked to cold exposure and energy poverty.
Kharecha & Sato (2019) project out to 2035 and estimate a long-run average of around 2,286 annual deaths, based on increased air pollution alone.
Then there’s Kaariaho (2025), whose number (170 deaths per year) is much lower. That’s not because the health impact was smaller, but because the scope was. Kaariaho only looks at respiratory diseases, and only at observed mortality using a synthetic control method. In other words, it’s a very conservative lower bound.
I’ve put these results together in a single graphic. Each dot represents a study. Together, they show a clear pattern: coal replaced nuclear, and people died because of it.
This isn’t about nuclear versus renewables. If you remove clean energy while fossil fuels are still on the grid, guess what fills the gap?
In Germany, it was coal. And it killed people." source
[BL] And how you are off-topic. as a hint, look at the title of the post: Have renewables decreased electricity prices: European edition. Then read the post, and stick to the topic. You have also been previously warning about shifting your arguments from one thread to another.
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Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive or off-topic posts. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
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Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
Sorry "Meanwhile energy transition to renewables has cost $750 billion euros with steadily increasing electricity costs and negligible decarbonization"
[snip]
"> In 2000 German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder began a phase-out of nuclear power in coalition with the Green Party
> 2005 Gerhard leaves office and gets a position at a Russian gas company
> Decline in Nuclear power capacity almost exactly matched by increase in gas generation
> 2016 Trump criticizes Germany for dependence on Russian gas
> 2021, natural gas accounts for 30% of German power production with half coming from Russia
> Meanwhile energy transition to renewables has cost $750 billion euros with steadily increasing electricity costs and negligible decarbonization
> 2022 Ukraine war breaks out
> Electricity prices in Germany skyrocket
> Massively accelerates decline of energy intensive industries in Germany
> Meanwhile France has 10x cleaner energy for 40% cheaper than Germany
> Renewables energy transition abysmal failure, dirtiest energy in Europe and among the most expensive, overall industrial decline and energy insecurity
Just so everyone knows how completely self inflicted Germanys dire energy predicament was" source
[BL] The only link I see to support your assertions is to a Twitter - er, sorry, X - account. The assertions on that tweet are unsupported, and you are simply repeating them here. That is not a suitable form of evidence.
Final Warning
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can and will be rescinded if the posting individual continues to treat adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Moderating this site is a tiresome chore, particularly when commentators repeatedly submit offensive, off-topic posts or intentionally misleading comments and graphics or simply make things up. We really appreciate people's cooperation in abiding by the Comments Policy, which is largely responsible for the quality of this site.
Finally, please understand that moderation policies are not open for discussion. If you find yourself incapable of abiding by these common set of rules that everyone else observes, then a change of venues is in the offing.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter, as no further warnings shall be given.
In comment 4. it states "The French electric company is bankrupt since they lose money on their nuclear electric sales. They close many reactors on the weekends since their electricity is too expensive to sell. They have artificially low retail prices to make voters think nuclear power is a good deal." Is there a suitable form of evidence for these statements?
[BL] This is obviously a complaint about having your own posts moderated.
In the Comments Policy you seem to want to ignore, the first bullet point ends with:
Moderation complaints are always off topic and will be deleted
It is clear that you have no intention of following the Comments Policy. As such, you have chosen to recuse yourself from further participation in this venue.
The OP makes a valid point with this point -
"A better analysis would use the cost of generating power in order to isolate the impact of renewables. We can get a better estimate of that by using the wholesale price of electricity."
That is absolutely true if you are only measuring the cost of generation.
" Beyond LCOE : A systems oriented perspective for evaluating electricity decarbonization pathways which was published here at SkS on June 12, 2025. The study provides a very comprehensive explanation for the total costs of electric generation, transmission, etc.
" While LCOE is a good metric to track historical technology cost evolution, it is not an appropriate tool to use in the context of long-term planning and policymaking for deep decarbonization. This report explains why LCOE fails to reflect the full complexity of electricity systems and can lead to decisions that jeopardize reliability, affordability, and clean generation."
https://www.catf.us/resource/beyond-lcoe/
The PDF attached is at the link
There is a second study "Levelized full system costs of electricity" published in 2022 in science direct.
Unfortunately, It requires a paid subscription and therefore I cant review the study to ascertain the validity ie whether it is with a superficial anti renewable bias.
Thanks
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544222018035
tder2012 has linked your study several times. According to Google Scholar it has only been cited 39 times in three years. That low number of citations shows that it has not been adopted as a better method of assessing electricity costs to the grid than LCOE. Nuclear power suporters seem to like that study, but realists do not. Lazard thinks that LCOE is the best method for a simple cost comparison.
Full systems analysis like Jacobson et al 2022 and many others find that a completely renewable system will be much cheaper than fossil energy, will additionally have dramatic health effects and resolve AGW. No published studies of future energy systems support using nuclear power, it is too slow and expensive.
I note that you have very rapidly posted in support of tder2012 after they were banned. Your posting style is very similar to tder2012.
Michael Sweet
I am definitely not Tder2012 - fwiw he doesnt come across as being very well informed.
Can you provide a link to full systems analysis by jacobson 2022. I am familiar with several of his 100% renewable studies, though I dont recall any parts of his studies that include a full system cost analysis. Best I recall is his comments that the renewable cost is less expensive when measuring the cost of generation.
Can you also post a link for France shutting down their nuclear reactors on weekends. I am familiar with the costs overruns and financial issues. I just cant find any source supporting shutting down reactors on the weekends. It would seem the cost of doing so would be prohibitive given the costs of restarts,
thanks
[BL] I will confirm from an SkS moderation standpoint that there is absolutely no indication that David-acct and tder2012 have any connection at all, other than being independent participants in the discussion forums here.
David-acct @8 &11,
Note that Google Scholar does provide a link to a pre-print PDF of Idel (2022) 'Levelized Full System Costs of Electricity'.
And there is a PDF of Jacobson et al (2022) 'Low-cost solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity for 145 countries' HERE
David-acct at 11:
I am very disappointed that you have forgotten the discussion we had in August 2023 about France shutting down reactors on the weekend since their power is too expensive to sell.
Here and at the following posts you posted off topic and we discussed that France shuts down their reactors on the weekends. I linked to Wikipedia. Since it is common knowledge that France shuts down their reactors on the weekends it is not discussed in the peer reivewed literature.
In the posts following my link you provided a link that gave the amount of electricity generated in France using their nuclear plants by day claiming that it showed reactors were not turned off on the weekend. A cursory glance at the data indicated that France shut down at least 6 of their plants on the weekend. They may partially scale back production from more plants but it is cheaper to shut down 6 plants than to work 12 plants at half speed. You did not provide any information that suggested they do not shut down their plants on the weeekend.
This data showed that reactors were shut down on the weekend:
date time Power MW
8/10 2:45 31645 Thursday
8/10 13:45 30424
8/5 4:15 28489 Saturday
8/5 16:15 25548
I note that in our previous discussion more than half of the "always on" nuclear plants were not generating power in the middle of an energy crisis since they required long term unscheduled maintenance.
I have previously linked Jacobson et al 2022 for you. It is not my job to go find the homework you threw away in the trash. As MA Rodger says, it is easily Googled.
Jacobson has been publishing full system analysis since 2015. Every paper renewable energy becomes cheaper and cheaper. Meanwhile the British have signed contracts for $50 billion (not counting interest) for a 1700 MW nuclear plant. Nuclear costs go up and up.
Why should I have to go find references to previous discussions that we have had??? If you do not pay attention to discussions we have here on SkS you should stop posting.
This post is off topic again. The OP is about renewable energy and you are posting about nuclear power.
MIchael Sweet - My apologies, though my question on France's nuclear power is in response to your initial comment #4 in response to TDeR.
Thanks for the reminder on the french Eco2mix, my apologies for not responding earlier. However, real time data from the eco2mix doesnt support the contention that france shuts down their reactors on the weekends. the vast majority of weekends show little or no change in electric generation from nuclear. There are declines in production every 7-8 weeks, though those dont appear to be connected to any shut downs. There is a wikipedia mention of shut downs, though the footnote is from an article from 2009, which doesnt appear to be valid after 2009. I could not find any support via a google search of the topic
David-acct:
You have posted many times here on SkS. You frequently post off topic. You have been told many times to post on topic, yet you refuse to do so. When you post off topic others cannot later look back and see what you said since yhou said it on a random OP.
I have responded to you on the Nuclear thread where discussions of nuclear power and its failures is on topic.
You appear to apologize for posting off topic but you do not acknowledge that you are asking a quiestion that has already been answered for you here on SkS, If you are going to post here you need to remember what you have been taught and not ask the same question over and over.
Hi Andrew. Nice post! Just a sugestión. Would not be better to include transmission and supply costs in order to get a more precise comparison. It is true that a more renewable system needs more network infraestructure in order to get all the electricity suplied to final consumption points. It is logical to eliminate tales but O jave my doubts when eliminating network costs. Regards!
Cesar @ 16:
What argument do you want to make that a renewable system needs more infrastructure? Loads on existing infrastructure are already designed to handle peak loads, so if renewables require increased transport during off-peak periods, the system can probably handle it - at a first guess. A system that spreads the load through time is more efficient than a system that is designed for peak loads and sits under-utilized much of the time.
And renewables can do a better job of placing generation close to consumption, reducing transmission requirements, if many small renewable generation sites replace a few very large centralized fossil fuel sites.
Please make your argument.
Recommended supplemental reading:
Affordability, Not Volatility: Renewables' Cost Advantage Grows
Renewables’ edge over fossil fuel electricity is growing, recent reports show. In 2024, more than 90 percent of new global renewable energy capacity was cheaper.
by Will Atkinson, RMI Spark Chart, Strategic Insights, Aug 13, 2025
More recommended supplemental reading:
The Researcher Who Wrote the Book on How Solar Got Cheap Is Back to Assess the Current Moment
With an updated edition of his 2019 book, Greg Nemet looks at global progress and puts U.S. obstacles in perspective.
by Dan Gearino, Inside Clean Energy, Inside Climate News, Aug 21, 2025
Cesar Madrid at 16:
In general the cost of transmission is a small fraction (say 10%) of the cost of building out new renewable infrastructure. In practice, the cost of renewables to the grid includes the costs that were paid to transmit the energy. It seems to me that the wholesale price of electricity would include the cost of transmission, although the OP does not state that. If you were buying PV electricity from Morocco in England (which has been proposed) you would look at the delivered price, not the price in Africa. Can you provide a reference that contains data that the cost of renewables does not include the cost of transmission?
In the USA most long distance transmission lines were built decades ago. The cables in the lines can be replaced at very low cost, and no new permits. The lines will then be able to transmit much more power than currently. My understanding is that upgrading the transmission cables will provide half of the transmission capacity required by an all electrical power system.