The Answer to Climate Change Is Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power
Posted: 11/25/2013 9:44 am
Steven Cohen
Executive Director, Columbia University's Earth Institute
When climate scientists and some energy policy analysts take a "tough-minded" look at the numbers, many come to the conclusion that the only technology now available to replace fossil fuels is nuclear power. Eduardo Porter of the New York Times made that argument last week when he wrote:
...nuclear power remains the cheapest and most readily scalable of the alternative energy sources.
As I indicated this past April, I disagree. There are a number of reasons that nuclear power is a bad solution to the climate crisis. The first is that the technology is really not available. Nuclear power plants are capital-intensive, technologically complex to manage, and difficult, if not impossible, to site. These are not minor issues. Investors would rather put their money elsewhere and communities intensely resist siting a plant in their backyard.
This means that even though we know how to generate electricity this way, and we have many decades of experience doing it, in the U.S. these plants will never be built in sufficient quantity to reduce global warming. In other parts of the world, we might pay attention to the lessons we should be learning in Iran. There is a thin line between the technology of nuclear power generation and the technology of nuclear bomb development. While it's too late to put the nuclear genie back in the bottle, let's stop pretending that human political systems or organizational processes can manage the risks of this technology.
There are other issues associated with current nuclear technologies that render them problematic as well. The toxicity of its fuel and waste, for example, should not be ignored. Catastrophic accidents may be rare, but when they occur, their impact is intense and long-lasting. While a well-managed plant poses little real danger, it is difficult to judge the danger posed by a poorly managed one. One also cannot dismiss the possibility of sabotage. Terrorists taking over a plant and threatening to allow an accident to occur could hold a city hostage.
Electric utilities, like water and sewage utilities, are natural monopolies that require government regulation...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-cohen/the-answer-to-climate-cha_b_4337435.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
...you may want to consider taking a remedial course in logic.
You say "the only reason European countries can have greater for their countries" (by which I presume you mean, "can have greater renewable capacity for their countries"
, "is that they lean on French nukes."
But whatever traditional energy source they are leaning on at present for the remainder of their power -- and for 24/7 capability -- it is still the case that relative to the US, the countries I mentioned have a large part of their demand being addressed RIGHT NOW by renewables -- and all the ones I noted are ABOVE the 20% that the NAS claims is the MOST we can hope to do. These are real, already-existing counterexamples to the NAS claim. Or are you claiming that the US gets less sunshine and wind per acre than Germany and Denmark?
As for Lovins, here is one paragraph from the RMI site:
"After two years at Harvard, Mr. Lovins transferred to Oxford, and two years later became a don at 21, receiving in consequence an Oxford ma by Special Resolution (1971) and, later, 12 honorary doctorates of various U.S. and U.K. universities. He has been Regents’ Lecturer at the U. of California both in Energy and Resources and in Economics; Grauer Lecturer at the University of British Columbia; Luce Visiting Professor at Dartmouth; Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Oklahoma; Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Colorado; Oikos Visiting Professor of Business, University of St. Gallen; an engineering visiting professor at Peking U.; 2007 MAP/Ming Professor at Stanford’s School of Engineering; and 2011– Professor of Practice at the Naval Postgraduate School."
(...)
"An $18-million utility experiment he cofounded and -steered in the 1990s, PG&E’s “ACT2,” validated his claim that very large energy savings could cost less than small or no savings, e.g. in houses comfortable with no air conditioner at up to +46ºC (+115°F) yet costing less to build."
(highlights mine)
I presume you must hold more credentials than Lovins, given your obvious contempt for him? Have you been invited to lecture at UC, Dartmouth, Stanford, University of BC, University of Oklahoma -- well let's just simplify, please let us in on your own illustrious career so we can compare and contrast. Have you worked with real companies and helped them to garner real energy efficiencies, saving them millions of dollars?
I note that you did not REFUTE one single factual bit of information presented in his very information- and detail-filled video. I also note you do not address the FACT that these energy efficiency gains and use of renewables are ALREADY BEING DONE. Because it's hard to refute REALITY, isn't it?
We have some very important choices facing us. We can invest heavily in nuke plants, shale oil drilling and so-called "clean coal"; or we can implement systems solutions that rely on more efficient usage, renewable generation, and distributed power grids. Your shrill polemics notwithstanding, there are real and viable alternatives to nuclear energy.
Over the past decade, 89% of growth in the world's energy consumption has come from fossil fuels.
I don't think nuclear and/or renewable power will make much headway against atmospheric carbon in the next couple of decades, especially since nuclear generation is on an accelerating decline (down 11% in the last two years).
80% of the world's electricity growth comes from fossil fuels.
Which of course ignores all the carbon from transportation, space heating, cement manufacture, land-use changes etc.
Sorry, kristopher, your renewable god is a figment of your faith.
You have, however, provided evidence for it.
You might find this useful since it addresses both the rapidly changing trend lines for renewables and the use of primary energy as a meaningful metric.
Energy efficiency and renewables are more than adequate. As you can see from the cost-deployment charts we are at a major turning point in what will be selected going forward.
Just as food for thought, here is the status of world final energy consumption by source.
This is the concept behind calls for energy efficiency (a strategy that is anathema to the coal and nuclear industry because it slashes their profits).
The energy wasted from thermal sources is a very significant factor in understanding the issue of what energy source is doing what. Primary energy measures the total amount of energy that a fuel source yields - no matter whether it is powering our lives (ie electricity or or propulsion for autos) or whether it is waste heat being transferred to our waterways from nuclear plants or heat causing NO2* emissions off the hot engine block of an internal combustion.
An alternative (and most say better) way of looking at the production and use of energy is to measure what is needed and consumed by the actual work being accomplished. For example, an average internal combustion engine (ICE) powered car ejects 85% of the energy content of the gasoline it consumes as heat and only uses 15% for motive power. When we look for alternatives to gasoline do we think biofuels, and duplicate the efficiencies of the gasoline powered ICE or do we focus on batteries and electric motors that have far better efficiencies - typically using 90% of the input energy for locomotion?
Writ large, what does that mean? Take a look at this flow chart and note that the "rejected energy" comprised 58.1 quads of the total 95.1 quads of primary energy used in the US last year. How much was actually used to do the work of the nation? Only 37 quads.
If we look more closely at the various sectors we can see where the major opportunities for energy efficiency improvements are to be found:
Sorry, no tables on DU but the bold is a legend for the information below it.
Sector: Gross - Useful Energy; Rejected Energy (proportion of useful to rejected)
Transportation: 26.7 - 5.6; 21.1 (21 : 79)
Electric Generation: 38.10 - 12.40; 25.70 (33 : 67)
In sectors where the heat value of the energy is useful we see much higher efficiency
Industrial: 23.9 - 19.1; 4.77 (80 : 20)
Commercial: 8.29 - 5.39; 2.90 (65 : 35)
Residential: 10.60 - 6.9; 3.72 (65 : 35)
Now let's look at the Solar, Wind and Hydro Subset of Electric Generation. These produce electricity directly with insignificant primary energy lost as heat in the generation phase, however they do incur line losses of about 7%.
SolarWindHydro: 4.07 - 3.78; 0.285 (93 : 7)
Let's compare that to
Nuclear: 8.05 - 2.62; 5.43 (33 : 67)
In the US, the our fleet of nuclear reactors (what is it, down to 99 and falling fast?) might have produced 8.05 quads of primary energy, but at about 35% efficiency at the busbar and a further 7% line loss, (8.05q x 0.35 = 2.82q x 0.93) that only equals 2.62 quads actually delivered to the end user for work.
3.78q > 2.62q
See also: http://www.nawindpower.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.11788#utm_medium=email&utm_source=LNH+07-19-2013&utm_campaign=NAW+News+Headlines
