Britain to build Europe's first nuclear plant since Fukushima

[FBaggins]

21. That's not "at most"... it's exactly what they're saying.

It's the "rough limit" of a system without storage and grid upgrades. It could be a bit higher or lower than that based specific circumstances. Say you had a local grid that centered on the Hoover Dam. You could go way above 20% variable renewables with no trouble at all. In other areas with little flexible generation (say with heavy coal and nuclear penetration), it could be well below that figure.

But at a national level... they're saying that 20% is the rough limit absent significant storage, scientific advances and large changes in not just how power is produced, but also how it's used. We haven't made those advances... nor do we have an economical option for storage anywhere near the amounts required. You can look back over years of posts and see kristopher imagining that large-scale storage technologies are essentially "off the shelf" and will be ready to go when we're ready to use them... but that simply isn't the case.

Re-read posts 9 & 10. Nobody has claimed a hard impenetrable limit. One poster has said that the report says that "We" (the same "we" that does not have the required technology or storage... or plans for a grid that changes how power is used) can't "count on" renewables for more than 20%. The other person claims that the report says that penetrations between 20-50% require only "policies that are friendlier to renewables" and it's only for penetration above 50% that significant storage and grid enhancements are required.

The first is far closer to an accurate reading than the second.

A quote you may have missed:

Higher levels of penetration of intermittent renewables (above about 20 percent) would require batteries, compressed air energy storage, or other methods of storing energy such as conversion of excess generated electricity to chemical fuels. Improved meteorological forecasting could also facilitate increased integration of solar and wind power. Hence, though improvements in the grid and related technologies are necessary and valuable for other objectives, significant integration of renewable electricity will not occur without increases in transmission capacity as well as other grid management improvements.

Incidentally, your hectoring about the need for degrees in hard sciences is wasted on me. I know what degrees I hold. You don't, nor do I know what degrees you may hold, no matter what you may assert. Such is the internet.

This much is true. However, it is also true that those with a solid scientific background usually have little trouble spotting those whose perception of "science" is driven more by their preferred policy decisions... rather than the other way around.

Incidentally, argument from authority is generally considered a logical fallacy

When the poster says "I know what I'm talking about and you don't"... that's true. When the poster can actually back up the claims with verifiable science (as Pam has done scores of times)... it isn't.