  The paradox of the energy transition is that the low marginal costs of new
renewable energy sources (RES) drag electricity prices down and discourage
investments in flexible productions that are needed to compensate for the lack
of dispatchability of the new RES. The energy transition thus discourages the
investments that are required for its own harmonious expansion. To investigate
how this paradox can be overcome, we argue that, under certain assumptions,
future electricity prices are rather accurately modeled from the residual load
obtained by subtracting non-flexible productions from the load. Armed with the
resulting economic indicator, we investigate future revenues for European power
plants with various degree of flexibility. We find that, if neither carbon
taxes nor fuel prices change, flexible productions would be financially
rewarded better and sooner if the energy transition proceeds faster but at more
or less constant total production, i.e. by reducing the production of thermal
power plants at the same rate as the RES production increases. Less flexible
productions, on the other hand, would see their revenue grow more moderately.
Our results indicate that a faster energy transition with a quicker withdrawal
of thermal power plants would reward flexible productions faster.
