Sorry, but the term »degrowth« is a red flag for me.
Sure, we are getting more efficient over time. That's why even Germany's emissions fell over the last two decades.
But cutting power that is actually needed means poverty, and that will immediately end support for long-term thinking as well as severely limit our technical options.
There are too many people for romantic visions of rural self-sufficiency.
Yes, but I'd like to add that we need to think about lifetimes.
Let's imagine having built all we need in 30 years, through sometimes extreme efforts.
Current solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries have a lifetime of (a bit generously) 30 years. So we'd have to immediately start again with the entire effort just to keep it up. I'm worrying that this might not be … sustainable.
You seem to argue that our /current/ fossil grid would also need more storage, but it works just fine as is. Nuclear is better at load following than fossils, so what gives?
Nuclear is faster at load following than everything but pumped hydro and (very dirty) gas peakers. It was even a design requirement for the german Konvoi type in the 70s and 80s.
At least Germany never had subsidies for commercial nuclear power.
On the other hand, »renewables« are still subsidized heavily, and there is much moaning right now because the build-out is slowing down, as the best places are taken.
And France has no /real/ problem with its riverside plants. Last year (much bemoaned) had 0.05% (one twentieth of a percent) curtailing for river temperatures.
If you don't have power output from storage equal to PEAK demand, it's the same argument for any storage. And storage doesn't /produce/ energy, it /consumes/ it (because of conversion losses, which are significant).
You seem to assume that only one reactor will be built at a time, and nothing learned. But that's not how you do it, and not how France already did it, obviously.
I have a little problem understanding how one can acknowledge the success of the Messmer plan and at the same time claim it unrepeatable.
There are already single events of more than a few hours where sunshine and wind are lacking. But that is only the immediate perspective; you need to integrate over at least several years to see the longer-term shortages that need to be handled as well. And that is quite obviously much more than a few hours. Therefore, I have some problems regarding such studies as credible.
This is just the fact: there are, at the current state, only two energy sources that can form the backbone of a decarbonized grid, and they have proved it, hydro and nuclear.
Hydro is not available everywhere, however, as it has really large area demand, and geological requirements.
And I repeat: nuclear /is/ very capable of load following.
And I repeat: batteries at the needed scalability don't exist (yet?).