Apples and oranges: Comparing nuclear construction costs across nations, time periods, and technologies

Jessica R. Lovering, Ted Nordhaus and Arthur Yip

Energy Policy, 2017, vol. 102, issue C, 650-654

Abstract: The literature on energy technology costs, diffusion, and learning has been characterized by data limitations, partial or arbitrary data sets, apples to oranges comparisons, and imprecision in the use of key concepts and terminology. Two responses to our paper, Lovering et al. (2016), by Koomey et al. and Gilbert et al. reflect many of these problems, conflating learning curves with experience curves, trends in actual costs with the relationship between cost estimates and final construction costs, and component costs with total installed costs. The respondents use inconsistent definitions of demonstration, first-of-a-kind, and commercial deployment across different energy technologies. They also propose to compare final installed costs for nuclear power plants, encompassing construction and finance costs, across different national economies and time periods encompassing a wide range of macro-economic circumstances and finance arrangements that overwhelm any signal from trends associated with the actual construction costs of the plants in question. In this response, we address the specific issues raised in these papers and suggest better practices for comparing energy technology costs, trends, and technological learning.

Keywords: Nuclear construction costs; Experience curves; International comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516306000
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:102:y:2017:i:c:p:650-654

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2016.11.004

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().