Comment In Belgium. (Score 1) 32
Part of the explanation is the antinuclear movement has lost a lot of steam in Belgium. The scientists were strongly against the phasing out of the nuclear plants but the full proportional parliamentarian system of Belgium gives to relatively small parties a role of kingmakers, which the green parties used to sabotage the nuclear industry.
In typical Belgian fashion, a nuclear phase-out was promised to the greens but delayed due date after due date because go figure, we need electricity. That policy, while hypocritical was not without effect: Since officially the plants were supposed to be phased out, they were not modernised and their maintenance was kept to the strict minimum.
To add insult to injury, the government instituted a "nuclear tax" that quite burned investors. So, it is moderately surprising Engie does not want to invest in expensive power plants. What they want is to sell gas. Cheap gas plants. This way you have little money immobilised in the country in case the government would go full retard again and want to tax them. And just import gas. So if Belgium ceases to be profitable, you disengage yourself by stopping to buy gas.
Of course, if you want to sell gas, it helps to have non dispatchable renewables so the grid goes unstable and you need gas plants as "backup". When i was a young engineering student, our first year chemistry professor was an oil industry shill who gave us folders from Total. They advocated for wind energy. Not because Total is a company of hippies but because they knew with wind turbines they could sell fossil fuels.
Of course, this pseudo phase out turned out horribly wrong and the electricity penury went so dire old airplanes engines were used as auxiliary electricity generators. The cost of electricity skyrocketed and the CO2 emissions worsened.
Now, the greens are losing votes. I do not know how this decision will turn out. Competence and efficiency are not things the average Belgian voter find very important. But it is probably a good thing the electricity generation goes back to the public. The private sector is bad for these kind of things. The most successful electrical grids were made by public companies.
I also have a confession to make. I am an ancient member of the ECOLO party. The French-speaking green party. Shame on me. I projected my imagination on this kind of parties because i had learned about nature and the CO2 problem via my chemistry class in high school. So i stupidly assumed this party must have been full of concerned scientists.
Nothing was farther from the truth. They were almost all wash-outs with always the same two bullshit degrees and had zero interest in nature. They hated maths. They hated scientists whom they perceived as arrogant. They frowned at me when i talked to them about the greenhouse effect. At the time, it was a preoccupation of science minded people and my dumb party buddies had not heard of it and told me in no uncertain terms they had zero interest in it. I was lectured on the fact that political ecology was not about whales a little flowers and had deep ideologically pure left wing roots and i had to be loyal to that.
They were just a party of vaguely anticapitalist, anti-industry people who could not balance a chemical equation to save their lives. One of the founders was a doctor in physics who ended up dying of COVID because he refused to vaccinate. Another executive was an agronomist and it is all i remember. Then i left the party. Then i left the country (for other reasons)
