Expanding nuclear and onshore wind power is the cheapest way for Sweden to meet surging electricity demand, leaving no place for offshore wind, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) said on Wednesday.
Sweden is aiming for net zero emissions by 2045. Electricity demand is expected to double as transport and industries such as steel shift to cleaner power.
“It is incontrovertible that both nuclear energy, including long-term operations and new build, and onshore wind will play the leading roles in any future least-cost capacity mix,” the NEA said in the report.
In the NEA’s base case for 2050, with an annual system cost of about $18bn (about R295.3bn), Sweden has 13GW of installed nuclear power and 30GW of onshore wind.
A similar system cost — covering generation, transmission, balancing and backup — could be achieved with 8GW-19GW of nuclear energy, plus 10 GW to 55 GW of onshore wind.
Sweden now has 7GW of installed nuclear capacity and 17GW of onshore wind, and only about 200MW of offshore wind.
If nuclear builds become more expensive or electricity imports cheaper, “there might be an opening for offshore wind to enter Sweden’s optimal capacity mix”, the report said. “For the time being, this is not the case.”
Onshore wind is the cheapest to build at about $1,500 per kilowatt, followed by offshore wind at $3,000 and nuclear at $7,000, the report said.
But nuclear reactors can produce round-the-clock electricity independent of the weather, reducing overall system costs, the NEA said.
Sweden’s right-of-centre government wants the equivalent of about 10 new, full-size reactors by 2045 to complement the six now in operation.
It has offered cheap loans and price guarantees to developers for 2,500 MW of new capacity. It has cut subsidies for offshore wind and rejected applications for sites off the Baltic coast.
Sweden’s electricity generation is already essentially fossil-free, with about 40% coming from hydroelectric power, 29% from nuclear, 21% from wind, 8% from thermal power and 2% from solar.
Reuters
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