Primary energy. That will shift dramatically as industries get electrified. No point cooling 70% of the produced energy in a nuclear or coal plant anymore.
Similarly, the question of interest is what to build. Fossil, or nuclear plants barely exist on that list globally.
It is simply too expensive. 5x the CO2 emissions get displaced by building renewables compared to nuclear, with a much shorter time to value.
Investing in nuclear today prolongs the climate crisis.
This kind of willfully blind thinking continues our reliance on fossil fuels. There is a need for reliable energy that cannot yet be met by renewable energy. For this specific reason, Russia funded German opposition to nuclear power.
The research finds it easily solvable today, but a holistic approach is necessary.
But that aside, just looking at the sheer magnitude of capacity mentioned in his papers, one can see that it's not even remotely easy or trivial. See eye-watering Table 2 in [2]
[1] https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/07/11/stanford-prof-ordered...
[2] https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/USSt...
Do you bet against this?
I'm pro anything low carbon. I love wind and solar and hydro and nuclear. These no-nuclear people are trying to get us to tie a hand behind our backs for no reason in the midst of a climate crisis. Energy generation choices are not a zero sum game.
Lots of antinuclear people mistakenly believe that pro-nuclear people are also anti-wind or anti-solar when in fact we are usually just anti-fossil and biofuel.
So you are telling me that a peaking nuclear plant will solve the last 10% when it comes online at earliest 2040? What problem are we even solving then rather than brute forcing nuclear into the solution?
Then try put that nuclear power plant on a marginal price market. What do you expect to happen?
Fossil and biofuel make 80% of our energy. This is not a straw man argument.