Hydro already accounts for 10/15% of electricity production in France (thanks FSM for the Pyrennes chains and the rivers) - and it does not seem like we have much more capacity (there are some small dams from the early XXth century that are being reused.)

Nuclear and wind suffer from NIMYBism and are now nothing more than political totems. PV is going this road now that people are realizing installing solar farms means cutting on forest or actual food farms.

Coal is already pretty much extinct.

Whereas gas is "painless" from a political point of view, private interest in the field (total, engine) have a strong history of political influence, and "gas" wins if RE are installed but the sun does not shine nor the wind blows... So gas is the energy of the future for Europe until there is a breakthrough in fusion or safer modular fission.

This will not make the geopol situation any simpler in the east, and is of course a disaster climate-wise - except maybe for coal-heavy countries like Poland and Chez Republic

Hydro is still vulnerable to downturns, though they need to be more prolonged to equal what's happening with the wind in this report. (California's 2021 drought is a good example of how hydro power can fall short.)

I mentally think of power generation reliability as: Uncontrollably variable from hour-to-hour: wind, solar, tidal motion Uncontrollably variable on month-to-year spans: hydro Pretty controllable: nuclear (and fossil fuels)

In France, most of the places where dams could be placed are already taken. It also means that pumped hydroelectric energy storage can only be set up marginally.