Wall St was down 94 overnight, its biggest fall in a month, while the local market is down 66.
A Liberal fable: once upon a time on a small, blue planet …
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A number of the inhabitants of a small blue planet are concerned that their reliance on carbon-based forms of energy is creating a feedback loop in their atmosphere that is heating the planet’s surface up. Most of their best scientific minds are urging action to move away from a dependence on carbon. A small, relatively insignificant country in the planet’s southern hemisphere, which produces about 2% of the carbon causing the problems, is furiously debating how best to do just that. The leader of the country’s more successful political group — let’s call them Labor — wants a complex scheme that ostensibly exploits the entrepreneurial spirits of the country’s businesses to drive the shift away from carbon. But many of the country’s businesses demanded that they not have to do any such thing and got Labor to change the scheme. It now amounts to a complex mechanism for recycling money and allowing carbon emitters to keep doing what they do now. The leader of this small country’s less successful political group — let’s call them the Liberals — wants a similar but more generous scheme, which provides more encouragement for carbon emitters to continue what they’re doing, but somehow also provide more incentive to stop doing it. But he has a problem because many people in his grouping don’t even think that the planet is heating up. He also has a problem because if he doesn’t support the plan of the leader of the more successful group, the latter will call an election. But one of the leaders of the small country’s least successful political grouping — for our purposes, the Nationals — which is in a coalition with the Liberals, doesn’t want to do anything at all and says so volubly and repeatedly. And a strange man who is in a political grouping of two — he and the deity he worships — feels the same way, and also says so a lot, primarily as a way to attract attention. None of the small country’s politicians except for one group — let’s call them the Greens — will come out and say that you can’t move away from carbon dependence without some short-term pain. The media of this small country finds this non-debate absorbing, and each utterance from Labor, Liberal, National and others is carefully parsed and scrutinised for its implications. But when it comes to the Liberals, the least interesting explanation is the one that is most likely. The leader of the Liberals knows exactly what sort of bind he is in and is working assiduously to achieve the least worst option for both him and his party, which is to get at least some of his party to support the scheme, even if the Nationals won’t. Bit by bit, he has to get his party used to the idea of backing Labor’s scheme, if he can secure some changes that will save face. It’s a slow and painful process, inch by inch, dragging the recalcitrant to a realisation of their own interests through a gradual change in position. But it should not be mistaken for that leader being in conflict with his own party. The leader will succeed in his task because political survival will be a more powerful motivation than principled objection, as it usually is on this planet. The real problem for the Liberal leader is that the Labor leader isn’t going to do anything to help him. The Labor leader’s higher priority is damaging his opponents. The scheme will become law, and make precisely no difference to the country’s carbon emissions. Nor will it make any difference to the planet’s overall carbon levels, which will continue to rise, dragging temperatures up with them. In a century’s time, the debates between these “Labor”, “Liberal” and “National” people will be forgotten. Most people won’t even remember which side the leaders were on. But the impact of their decisions, and those of politicians just like them in most other countries on the planet, will be clear for everyone to see. And they’ll rue the failure of their forebears. |
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22 Comments
The observations made in this piece are consistent with climate science.
The cumulative nature of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere is driving combined CO2-equivalent levels toward 500 parts per million, near to the level at which the East Antarctic ice sheet formed and land temperatures dropped to values allowing large mammals to develop from the late Eocene ~40 - 34 million years ago (late Eocene).
CO2-e levels are already exceeding 450 ppm, more than 50 ppm above conditions at which the Arctic Sea ice formed from the mid-Pliocene ~2.8 million years-ago, a period at which the genus Homo developed from Australopithecine bipeds.
Which far exceeds the levels of 280-300 ppm at which stabilization of river flow in the Great Valleys of the Middle East, the Indus and south China, allowed development of irrigation systems and consequently of civilization about 7000-6000 years-ago.
At current emission levels of 2 ppm/year CO2 above the present CO2-e level of 450 ppm the ice age threshold will be crossed into a greenhouse period in a few decades. Feedbacks from the carbon cycle, including release of methane from permafrost and polar sediments, and from ice melt/water interaction dynamics, may accelerate this process.
The lag effects of atmospheric carbon rise, including the melting of Greenland and the Antarctic ice sheets, and of sea level rise, may take unspecified periods, shifting the climate system into a transitional state, which it may have already entered. The transition is more than likely to be associated with abrupt tipping points, such as have been recorded during the recent history of Earth (at 14 - 11 thousand years-ago and at 8200 years-ago).
Whereas the unique nature of the current “experiment” Homo sapiens is conducting with the atmosphere, in terms of the rate of CO2 forcing (two orders of magnitude faster than during recorded past climate changes), precludes precise timing of events, as stated by John Holdren, Obama’s science advisor: When driving in the fog, knowing there is a cliff ahead, start pulling the breaks as soon as you can …
Andrew Glikson
Earth and paleoclimate scientist
I would be enjoying so much more the internal destruction of the Libs if it wasn’t such a serious issue. Not an efficient mechanism for delivering change is it?
THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE
should have been applied a fair while back
We should embargo exports of coal whilst
we scale back our own usage.
At least in the future we’ll be able to say we did
something.
NO TAXPAYER FUNDING OF COAL
The Australian contribution of <2% has always been a misleading focus regarding responsibility - though strictly accurate in a woolly sort of way. As I understand it over 1/3 of the total GHG emissions globally is attributable to a host of countries all less than 2%.
So if these say 50 countries at an average of less than 1% each all say what they do is irrelevant then fully 1/3 of the emissions are not addressed.
And if a country with the demonstrable capacity and advantages of Australia gives up early and often it says to all the other comparable countries don’t bother. That’s bad.
This perspective was pointed out by Monica Oliphant elected President of the International Solar Energy Society at their last conference (in Sydney).
What do you mean by embargo J-Boy? As no more government subsidies, or no more coal exported from Australia at all? I know this is the Drug Dealer’s defence, but if we don’t sell it, someone else will. There’s a lot of coal burning infrastructure sitting around that needs coal, and the owners of that infrastructure are hardly going to sit around waiting for it to come if we stop selling it.
Imagine a Chinese economy that NEEDS coal to continue operating? What steps do you think they wouldn’t take to keep it coming? I disagree with the eloquent and intelligent Guy Pearse in that I doubt it will make any difference to global emissions if Australia stops exporting coal. I don’t like it, maybe I’m a glass half-full person, but I just can’t see it making a difference. Worse, I suspect that we might help the climate along a little bit, at the cost of massive civil unrest as a big international shake up of resources takes place.
So what’s the alternative? We’ve got to either get that stupid cure-all CCS working, or prove unequivocally that it doesn’t work, so we can stop stuffing around with it. My preferred option is to give them a tiny bit of money, or better yet get them to pay for their own research! (Apparently the wool board donates 1% to wool research; coal is 0.1 or something similar) But give them some money, and concentrate on becoming solar leaders and having a big crack at the Cooper Basin geothermal resource.
But, I genuinely doubt any of this will happen. Politicians don’t have the stomach for change.
Further to Tom Mcloughlin (2:50pm):
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of coal but the fourth largest coal miner, and as with everything, utterly dwarfed by China (46%) and the US (19%) (these will be slight overestimates because it only considers the world top ten miners; see table, unfortunately this window does not accept formating or pictures).
So Australia is responsible, directly and indirectly for about 7% of the CO2 emissions due to coal (probably lower, since most of our coal is cleaner than, for example, most of the Chinese-mined coal). I am not sure of where in the world ranking of emitters that puts us, but way up there after the big countries, and most certainly ahead of almost all European countries (UK and Germany are big coal miners and users).
Country Coal mined
Mt Rank %total
China 2,804 1 46.3%
USA 1,146 2 18.9%
India 529 3 8.7%
Australia 428 4 7.1%
South Africa 283 5 4.7%
Russia 347 6 5.7%
Indonesia 180 7 3.0%
Poland 162 8 2.7%
Kazakhstan 103 9 1.7%
Colombia 75 10 1.2%
Your substantive analysis of what is happening and will happen politically is spot on Mr. Keane. Did you also see, and say, over two years ago, as at least one modest person did, that Australian fantasists would only be accommodated by Rudd up to the election because he didn’t really think he would benefit from giving us the stupid things we told pollsters we wanted? Not only was it obvious that Australia’s posturings were always going to be an irrelevance to what the big countries did but it was obvious we could only harm ourselves economically, without any environmental gain, if we led the way in halting what we do best and cheapest.
Can you, BTW, find anyone to explain plausibly how we do not have to become poorer - at least until some brilliant Chinese or Indians or Germans, or even Australians, show us how to become rich from our sunlight or our waves or our uranium - if less coal is burned in Australia and elsewhere over the next 10 to 15 years?
Summary: Bernard Keane, James Hansen, Clive Hamilton, Tim Flannery et al(armists) demand an end to democracy and immediate gaia-saving leadership by our betters…..namely….. Bernard Keane, James Hansen, Tim Flannery et al(armists) otherwise we’ll all die in the fires of Earth prior to toasting for an eternity in the fires of Hell.
Grow up Bernard.
Alas for the fable’s punchline, reality is not that simple. The ability to artificially draw down atmospheric CO2 is going to advance much faster than the creeping decade-by-decade rise in temperatures. The future of climate politics will simply be about deciding what global and regional climates should be, not about struggling to restrain ourselves from inducing an unplanned change. And no program of near-term emission reductions, whether paced gently or urgently, has time to make any difference to global temperatures before we reach that more advanced stage. The only thing we can do in the interim to truly affect climate is to put up lots of aerosols, which could give us an immediate temporary cooling. And by the time we get to the point of true climate control, it will be a background issue politically, because we will all be preoccupied with whether we can survive the other manifestations of truly advanced technology, like artificial life and artificial intelligence… You heard it here first.
Mephistopheles (4.56pm). You need to inform yourself more. Guy Pearse has shown that the actual income from coal, while big, is not quite as overwhelmingly big as many people assume (even in Qld). And in any case the reduction in income from coal mining will be quite gradual over the next several decades (even if the climate needs more, even if Australia itself never builds another coal-fired power station — we use less than one quarter of our coal ourselves) so it is not an apocalyptic scenario — IF we begin to do something to replace the industry now, and not in time-honoured Australian complacency, just say she’ll be right mate.
As to what can replace that income? Sheesh. Have you been asleep the last few decades while entire unimagined industries now worth trillions per year have arisen? (Not to mention reading the Garnaut Report, the Stern Report or reading Al Gore, or Tom Friedman or any number of forward thinkers.) Until Howard’s indifference forced them offshore we had among the world’s best prospects for solar-PV (now in China run by one of China’s richest men, an expat Australian-Chinese, our immense loss) and solar-thermal (now in California) power industries. But if we do nothing AND spend about $7B in subsidies to the old dying industries of coal, then sure, we have a problem.
Another shot at that table.
……………………..Coal mined………
Country……….Mt……Rank…..%total
China …….2,804 …..1 ……46.3%
USA ……..1,146 ……2 …….18.9%
India …………529 ……..3 ..8.7%
Australia ..428 …..4 …….7.1%
Russia ………..347 …….5 .5.7%
South Africa…283………6……..4.7%
Indonesia…….180 …..7 ……3.0%
Poland ……….162 …….8………2.7%
Kazakhstan….103 ..9………1.7%
Colombia……….75……..10……..1.2%
Were I into Konspiracy Kreepiness I’d say the whole AGW thingy had been cooked up to force the West to throw the switch to nukes. Jes sayin’
On tuther hand, do the numbers - it isn’t very difficult for anyone with basic arithmetic (or, for thoise under 40 a $5 calculator will suffice).
Six billion people, are nbeing cooked by fewer than half a billion who will NOT have their lifestyle altered no matter what the evidence. One might say that they are certifiable morons who’ll be long dead before the effects become serious. So, apart from being just plain evil, they must also hate their unorn descendants.
Is there even a patholgicial condition to describe this?
Michael James: when you affect to lecture people as though you are well-read, well-informed and smart, you should be wary of making a fool of yourself. Anyone can do some best-seller reading of the works of Tom Friedman and Al Gore. Like Guy Pearse, whom you also cite, Al Gore is demonstrably not to be trusted without careful checking of anything important he asserts, the Garnaut report is a capable but derivative job done for a political client and Stern’s work, even in the economic area where he can claim expertise, is undermined by the fallacies of his discount factor as exposed by Sir Partha Dasgupta (inter alios). While you Michael James seem to be of the school that gave us the Cain-Kirner winner-picking government in Victoria believing that some other clever people can be found to make sure all sorts of expensive decisions are made which will turn out profitably I have spent several decades investing money in successful competitive businesses, avoiding the disasters of the Tech-wreck which presumably Michael James would include in his Olympian survey of “the last few decades while entire unimagined industries now worth trillions per year have arisen” that he supposes me ignorant of. So what that someone is now doing good business in China with technology originally developed in Sydney or that some geo-thermal technology developed in Australia is doing good business in California? Given that the markets in which they are making their money (and paying their taxes - *as they always would have*) are in China (with over a billion people and huge energy and pollution problems) and California (also with huge energy problems and a fashionably Green-leftish constituency that any serious politician has to attend to) can you spell out how the businesses would have grown in Australia, employment figures, revenues, taxes? If IT business like Evan Thornley’s Look Smart had to be based in California (do you want to tell me it employed many people in Australia and contributed to Australian taxes?) what makes you think the Howard government, the Carr government, the Bracks government, the Beattie government or… etc. or their bureaucracies might have chosen well how to invest public money in those or any other technologicial innovations? Why not wave power? And the evidence is that government’s have been making and encouraging very bad and uneconomic wind power and solar developments which are already making us poorer to appease fashionable nonsense such as you Michael James espouse. If you object to government subsidy to the development of “clean coal” technology (including CO2 capture and storage) I would at least share your scepticism although there is at least something to be said for trying to keep a good thing going (and the technology would benefit our coal exports as well as our power production) rather than punt on something like photo-electric power generation from solar radiation which would start from a minute base and not deal well with the base load power requirements. We should be making as much money as we can so we can help ourselves and others while making the reasonable assumption that private investors will be quick to take up technology from wherever it comes (and it is 100 times as likely to be developed outside Australia as within given the population differences and the number of bright engineers the developing countries like India and China are turning out) and apply it within Australia when it can be seem to be justified commercially.
Well Mephistopheles, speaking of people trying to sound well read and coming across as a raving lunatic, your contribution above is an excellent example of the genre. I’m pretty smart, and I’ve got no idea what your intention for the first half of the post is, other than trying to point out to someone else that you think you’re pretty smart too. In future, try shorter sentences and paragraphs in your rants, it makes them easier to digest. Also, try using your real name, I don’t care for people hiding behind pseudonyms.
And so on to the factually incorrect second half of your post. The point of creating technology here is that not only do you actually sell things to other countries, you create intellectual property and a skills base in Australia; something the Howard Government saw very little value in. Surely someone with your base economic reasoning can see value for Australia in that?
Is “why not wave power” a rhetorical device or a genuine question? In any case, the answer is that it’s too expensive, hard to stop it getting wrecked in big seas, and there are currently no large scale generation plants in operation.
And here we move into your real motives; you don’t believe in Climate Change (presumably the “fashionable nonsense” you refer to, mostly because you’re afraid of changing the status quo, and the affect this will have on your investments. Or perhaps you’re a nuvlear supporter? They’re the only people in Australia who would say “very bad and uneconomic”; check out the Coastal Guardians, funded by the nuclear lobby. Fact is, wind power is uneconomic compared to digging up dirt and burning it, but cheap compared to all other forms of energy, particularly clean coal. Also, there are no ongoing costs as the price of the input fuel does not fluctuate with international whim and war. Further, the Government has invested very little in solar power, most installations are at the research/proof of concept stage, and not contributing greatly to the grid.
At least we partly agree on clean coal. But, don’t for a second think it’s going to be cheaper than wind, solar PV or solar thermal.
Again you reveal your ignorance by talking about photoelectrics for generation; it is very unlikely PV will ever be cost effective, large scale thermal conversion is far more effective. And you put your foot further in it by trotting out the ‘base load’ myth. Base load was a term created to appease stupid and inefficient coa fired generators that operate only in a very narrow band of efficiency. To use this power households were encouraged to heat water over night; off-peak was created. Now, we think that water needs to be heated overnight and base load is with us. The only people that genuinely need 24hr power are Al-smelters and heavy industry. Are you suggesting that we should subsidise them? Socialist are you?
Your closing argument reveals your true colours. It’s All About Money isn’t it? Even ignoring the obvious argument that allowing the climate to change will probably cost a lot more than fixing it, I find your position ethically indefensible. It also shows the obvious flaws in the current economic systems we’re burdened with, where environmental and social costs are rarely part of the price. Consider this before you fly off the handle and try to defend your ego next time.
Why are we picking on the Liberal Party here for not voting for a scheme that won’t do anything to reduce the incentive to pollute?
Shouldn’t we be breaking down the doors of the Labor Party, shouting at them to grow a pair of balls and put forward a scheme to, you know, actually reduce emissions?
Seems to me the sensible idea would be to vote this dog down, and hope that someone will have the courage to believe in their convictions, and put forward a proper bill.
(but of course none of this follows the easy script which has been set out by Rudd/Wong and the media)
I think your right Michael, but the political reality is that a stronger bill wouldn’t pass. Labour need either the Greens +XenoFielding on side, or the Libs. The libs won’t support a stronger bill, neither will Fielding, who is an idiot. We’re torn between two rocks and a hard place.
Oh no, I used your instead of you’re. -5 style points.
At the dire risk of being repetitive and annoying, I have to again disagree with Bernard on the CPRS. It is certainly a less fiscally sound scheme than it could have been, and it has various flaws (major: the fuel excise offset; minor: the initial ban on exports of Australian Emissions Units). But! It is still going to be a highly effective means of achieving whatever national emissions targets we sign up to.
The handouts of free permits to EITE industries are probably already more generous than they need to be, but they don’t much diminish the environmental efficacy of the CPRS. Permits are to be handed out based on production times the industry wide average emissions intensity for a given activity, not the actual emissions of any given company. This has two important implications:
1. Little or no incentive to cut production. This is the point, of course - these measures are intended to keep industries in Australia and prevent a possible (real if often overstated) loss of jobs. In some cases, but only some, cutting production might have been an efficient way to reduce Australia’s emissions at least cost.
2. Undiminished incentive to cut emissions by other means. A freely given permit can still be sold for market value by an EITE company that doesn’t need it. Holding on to a free permit carries an opportunity cost essentially equal to the cost of buying one in the first place. EITE companies therefore have the same incenive as others to reduce their emissions through cleaner technology, smarter practices and so on, to the maximum extent justified by the current and likely future carbon price.
Now, what’s proposed is undeniably a big costly giveaway, and you might judge it to be partly or entirely a waste of potential Government revenue (depending on how serious you think the threat of carbon leakage is). But it does not mean that business will not cut emissions, or massively diminish the environmental effectiveness of the CPRS.
In the interests of getting some work done, I may leave it there and come back to other issues like international trading and offsets later - I hope for many more opportunities to continue this fascinating debate!
Disclosure: I work for an industry organisation, but my views are my own.
Evan Beaver (various posts). Good points. Previously I have suggested to Crikey that they remove anonymity for bloggers. Anyway, perhaps I was a bit snappy to Mephisto but I have lost patience with complacent and poorly informed Australians (is it Howard that has done this to us? Once it was great to proclaim oneself an Australian when o/s, now …..). People who find it impossible to conceive of running an economy on anything other than what we are currently doing, and digging coal out of the ground is one of the worst. As regular Crikey readers know, I am a research scientist and am appalled, depressed and ashamed that Australia is rapidly approaching the bottom of the OECD league table of R&D spending per capita. All the Asian tigers are passing us. As M so well demonstrates we just do not believe in ourselves.
I couldn’t read M’s rant but the response to the question as to what we could do are all around. While it is true that some countries have certain natural advantages (low wages for a lot of manufacturing, large domestic markets etc) but not as much as he thinks. Finland, with a quarter of our population, and coming out of decades under the Russian yoke, produced Nokia the largest company in one of those completely new trillion dollar industries I alluded to. Sweden with less than half our population has a whole list of world beating industries — including Ericsson another telcom giant, and two car companies (Volvo & Saab. We don’t have a single car company; GMH is not even listed on the Aust. stock exchange!) which it was then smart enough to sell to the American dinosaurs when it became apparent the world industry was consolidating; good grief they even make jet airplanes while we spend tens of billions on American imports. Sweden also has the world’s largest white goods manufacturer (Electrolux owner of many other common brands), the world’s largest furniture retailer (Ikea), ABB (Swedish-Swiss construction and electric power giant) and lots of other names familiar to you: SKF, Preem, Scania etc. Oh, let us not forget Vatenfall which is actually the company leading the construction and installation of CCS (the only operating one in the world, Schwartze Pompe; and the US FutureGen; it is a sick joke to think we can develop that market should CCS ever actually prove viable — but Vatenfall is making money out of it right now). Oh, and the Rausing brothers who are now British and permanent residents of their top ten rich list, for inventing the TetraPak cardboard drink container (and the machines that make them). Taiwan with a very similar population has become a giant in electronics with dozens of leading brand names, not to mention suppliers to all the others in the world. And anyone who imagines that the success in electronics is entirely or even at all related to having cheap labour needs to take a cold shower.
There are hardly any Australian company names known around the world, and the few that are such as BHP-Billiton and Rio are barely Australian — neither is majority owned, as is true for all those coal companies and most miners, and this is part of the reason why their contribution to our economy (versus their turnover) is less than you think. It is shocking.
I have already said most of what I thought important about:
on CCS here:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/06/more-smoke-and-mirrors-from-the-coal-lobby/
and here:
on industrial policy here:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/05/22/rudds-media-manipulation-and-more/
and here on nuclear power:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Politics/20090305-Costellos-foolish-flirtation-with-nuclear-power.html#comments
Evan Beaver: mild apology for not editing for readability but no apology to the somewhat offensively supercilious target (you are completely wrong about my defending ego, it was grumpy grandpa’s irritation with people who peddle bad arguments and sloppy thinking especially when affecting to be well informed although they have, apparently, just done a bit of fashionable reading).
I don’t think we would disagree as much as you suppose though you are approx. right when you say of my policy prescriptions “It’s All About Money isn’t it?” as I think the only Australia can get close to rationally consensual decisions on AGW matters is to evaluate them as well as possible in money terms. Why you think I wouldn’t make the usual attempts to include environmental and social costs (and benefits) in such calculations I don’t know. Perhaps you are too used to the old Canberra ways lagging prudently about half a generation behind the unproven cutting edges (outside the ANU).
Intellectual property is of course the hope of the future as it has been the cause of the escape from Malthusianism over the last 250 years at an accelerating rate though one should note that it is not the “property” part which matters for those purposes. Your pedantries miss my point(s) which convey my lack of bitterness about the Howard government not having got behind (and which of its advisory bodies said it should have?) various favourite alternative energy ideas with our money. To start with, the value of the royalties from any Australian originated IP in those areas and any taxes on them would be absolutely piffling in the overall order of things. I have just received a proposal to invest in a private equity venture in the energy field:
“In Australia, there is a large amount of rarely used electricity capacity sitting idle in the form of standby generators located at universities, hospitals, and other large commercial and government facilities. At various times – especially in summer in the late afternoon when demand for electricity is at its highest by virtue of air conditioner usage etc – the price for electricity in the spot market rises dramatically, sometimes reaching 100 times the annual average.
XYZ enters into agreements with those facility owners to gain access to the electricity of those generators. XYZ then sells the output of those generators (when prices are high) into the wholesale market. XYZ then uses this capacity to enable it to sell call options to electricity retailers, who gain protection against high prices when the price for electricity exceeds the strike price on the option.
The revenue stream to XYZ is the price at which XYZ sells the option to use the electricity to the electricity retailer, which is significantly greater (sometimes as much as 3x) than the price it pays the facility owner for access to the electricity.
XYZ will also earn revenue by installing and owning standby generators in specific (usually remote) locations where electricity demand during peak periods exceeds the capacity of the electricity grid.”
To be continued perhaps, but time runs out. I have no existing investment interest which would bias me towards one form of energy rather than another. Nuclear power is such an obvious way to go given that France can run a high consumption modern economy largely on nuclear but that, because it can’t compete here, only emphasises how much better for us it is to use coal while we can. And of course use it as efficiently as possible. There is a tendency for commentators, Guy Pearse included, to ignore the importance of the margin. Even an extra one per cent return on investment, or an extra cost saving of one per cent over large scale and long time scales do matter.
Thanks for a measured response Mephs, when mine was clearly inflamatory.
The ‘spare capacity’ you refer to is often termed ‘demand side response’. I worked with A Company last year trying to secure some of these agreements. Fact is, the retailers want a couple of Megs, on demand, and more importantly where it is needed. The spare capacity is worthless to them in a total generation sense; but can be cheaper than upgrading area networks and substations. I actually don’t think there’s much money in this sort of work. You don’t get the spot/VOL prices without a pre signed agreement, and the retailers don’t have much need for them.
France’s nuclear industry is based around scale and shared resources; processing and transport in particular. For it to be any where near cost effective we would need 20 odd generators, otherwise the scale of the ancillaries outweighs the cost savings. Also, we need to act sharpishly to stop putting more CO2 out, nukes will take too long to get through. And that ignores the political pain. We can’t even get an emissions trading scheme through that inconveniences almost no one!