With much wailing and gnashing of teeth...

[kristopher]

When I write that there is an energy war between the established entities that provide out societies with electricity from a system designed around centralized thermal generation, one response is to claim it is a "conspiracy theory". Nothing could be further from the truth. What I'm pointing out is nothing more than behavior driven by self interest as these companies and people act together in a way better characterized as a sort of protective herding behavior.

This Bloomberg business press article demonstrates the motive that leads these entities to engage in actions such as trying to discredit the renewable competition by saying "they can't do alone"; or by claiming dire consequences on the climate change front even though nuclear is now acting more to prop-up coal and obstruct renewable deployment than any other technology. It is also what leads them to deny the very real problems associated with nuclear energy itself. The fact is there will NEVER be a time when the entities that profit from centralized thermal generation will agree that it is a good idea to shut these plants down. They will forever be meeting calls to cut their profits by pressing their case to the public with the total lack of ethics we have come to accept as a norm of corporate action.

Germany’s Nuclear Exit Sparks Despair Among Energy Companies

...Unsurprisingly, the three largest incumbents–E.ON, RWE and EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg–last week reported plummeting earnings for the first nine months of the year. Impairments, raised nuclear provisions for the earlier dismantling of reactors, and lost production volumes all dragged down profits.

But don’t expect this to be the end of the story: earnings will continue to be under pressure next year from the fallout of the nuclear exit decision, albeit to a lesser extent than this year. Part of the financial burden of the nuclear exit is related to the fact that the utilities traditionally sell the bulk of their electricity production ahead of physical delivery to customers.

RWE, for instance, has already sold more than 90% of its 2012 German power output. At the beginning of 2011–around three months before the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that triggered the German policy reversal–RWE had sold more than 50% of its 2012 production in Germany.

The idled reactors, however, cannot produce any electricity anymore. As a result, the utilities have to either produce power in more expensive thermal power plants like coal-fired facilities or buy the missing volumes on the market at higher prices.

Analysts said this could result in several hundreds of millions of euros in lost earnings...

http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2011/11/14/germanys-nuclear-exit-sparks-despair-among-energy-companies/?mod=google_news_blog