Keeping ageing power plants in reserve may be a better way for European countries to deal with rising renewable power than more costly and elaborate energy market mechanisms.
Many European Union countries are investing in new power plants to replace ageing assets, to meet EU pollution limits and, in the case of Belgium and Germany, to accommodate a nuclear phase-out.
The trouble is that this increasingly urgent new investment coincides with an upheaval in European electricity markets as a result of ambitious renewable power targets for 2020 and an economic slowdown.
A shift to more wind and solar power requires flexible, conventional back-up capacity. On a still, cold, winter evening, for example, gas would have a faster response time to fill the gap than coal and nuclear.
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