Nuclear Fission, Natural Gas, Geothermal Energy, Nuclear Fusion: The Future Role of Baseload Power Plants (2025)

A reliable climate-compatible electricity supply is possible through the interplay of solar and wind energy with storage systems, flexible power consumption and residual-load power plants. The expansion of renewable energy and the European electricity and hydrogen grids is expected to cover Europe’s electricity needs and most of the demand for hydrogen across the continent.

Detailed modelling shows that base-load technologies can be integrated into an energy system dominated by solar and wind energy. The key here is a flexible hydrogen system that enables the power plants to run at high capacity utilization. During times when demand is low, their power would be used for electrolysis, allowing hydrogen imports to be reduced. Baseload technologies make little difference to the need to expand and develop the electricity and hydrogen grids, and should also have no impact on the transition to electric mobility and heat pumps. They make sense primarily when they are more cost effective than the alternatives. New base-load power plants do, however, represent a rather more long-term option, given their long construction and usage times.

The modelling shows that – even based on optimistic assumptions – the overall system costs of transforming to climate neutrality by 2045 are at the same level with the addition of base-load power plants as in the reference scenario, which focuses primarily on solar and wind energy. Additional risks arise through cost increases and delays in the construction of base-load power plants, which can be caused both by the lower technological maturity of the technologies involved and by the typical complexity of
large individual projects.

This discussion paper presents the conclusions that the working group drew from the analyses.