Clean firm power: "Europe must 'go big or go home' !" (Future Clean Architects report)

"Europe’s supply of clean electricity must increase substantially for the years and decades to come. Clean firm power [...] is part of a portfolio of flexibility tools working together to complement the massive deployment of variable wind and solar, and as such they are indispensable to reaching an economically optimal, fully decarbonized electricity grid", states the last report of Future Cleantech Architects (FCA), released on 22/06/2026.

"Clean firm power designates a class of power generation technologies that deliver clean electricity in a controllable way, whether as baseload or dispatchably", specifies FCA. It notably includes hydropower, nuclear power and next-generation geothermal power.

Yet, despite its "systemic value, clean firm power deployment will not happen in the market without more supportive public policy. Crucially, this support needs to be multifaceted to address a wide range of obstacles".

Among those obstacles to address, FCA stresses out "derisking investment (e.g. exploration guarantees for geothermal, low interest rates for nuclear) for these technologies…