EU Geniuses Snub The Cleanest, Most Affordable Energy On The Planet
Kate Abnett writes at Reuters:
The European Commission, the EU's executive, wants to set up a 40 billion euro Just Transition Fund, comprised of 30 billion euros from an EU coronavirus recovery fund and 10 billion euros from its budget for 2021-27.The fund aims to encourage a shift from high-carbon industries that would help coal miners to retrain and find new low-carbon jobs, and support regions whose economies depend on polluting sectors to build new industries.
Ambassadors from the EU's 27 member states agreed on Wednesday that the Just Transition Fund should not support the decommissioning or construction of nuclear power plants, nor investments related to fossil fuels, according to a document published on Thursday.
The position is in line with the Commission's, making it likely that the final Just Transition Fund will exclude nuclear and gas.
Could it be that -- per Mike Shellenberger at Quillette -- "Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests"?
And consider who is and isn't behind nuclear -- and why not?In nearly every situation around the world, support for nuclear energy from climate activists like Thunberg and AOC would make the difference between nuclear plants staying open or closing, and being built or not being built. Had Thunberg spoken out in defense of nuclear power she likely could have prevented two reactors in her home nation of Sweden from being closed. Had AOC advocated for Indian Point rather than condemned it as dangerous, it could likely keep operating, for at least 40 years longer.
That's because the main problem facing nuclear energy is that it's unpopular--and far more among progressives than conservatives, and far more among women than men. There are no good technical or economic reasons that nations from the US and Japan to Sweden and Germany are closing their nuclear plants. Center-left governments are closing them early in response to the demands of progressives and Greens--the very same people who are claiming climate change will kill billions of people.
Again, the money.
Another Shellenberger Quillette piece:
A single nuclear plant like Indian Point can provide electricity for over three million people, and thus replacing even one nuclear plant is a lucrative business for competitor fossil fuel and renewable energy companies. During a 10-year period, Indian Point's owner could bring in $8 billion in revenue. Over 40 years revenues could easily reach $32 billion. If Indian Point plant closes as scheduled--one reactor closed earlier this year, and another is set to close next year--those billions will flow directly to natural gas and renewables companies.Sierra Club, NRDC, and EDF have worked to shut down nuclear plants and replace them with fossil fuels and a smattering of renewables since the 1970s. They have created detailed reports for policymakers, journalists, and the public purporting to show that neither nuclear plants nor fossil fuels are needed to meet electricity demand, thanks to energy efficiency and renewables. And yet, as we have seen, almost everywhere nuclear plants are closed, or not built, fossil fuels are burned instead.
...But it's not just about money. It's also about ideology. Anti-nuclear groups have long had a deeply ideological motivation to kill off nuclear energy.
Policymakers, journalists, conservationists, and other educated elites in the '50s and '60s knew that nuclear was unlimited energy and that unlimited energy meant unlimited food and water.
We could use desalination to convert ocean water into freshwater. We could create fertilizer without fossil fuels, by harvesting nitrogen from the air, and hydrogen from water, and combining them. We could create transportation fuels without fossil fuels, by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to make artificial hydrocarbons, or by splitting water to make pure hydrogen gas.
Nuclear energy thus created a serious problem for Malthusians--followers of widely-debunked 18th-century economist, Thomas Robert Malthus--who argued that the world was on the brink of ecological collapse and resource scarcity. Nuclear energy not only meant infinite fertilizer, freshwater, and food but also zero pollution and a radically reduced environmental footprint.
In reaction, Malthusians attacked nuclear energy as dangerous, mostly by suggesting that it would lead to nuclear war, but also by spreading misinformation about nuclear "waste"--the tiny quantity of used fuel rods--and the rapidly decaying radiation that escapes from nuclear plants during their worst accidents.
...Over time, I believe, the contradiction between preaching climate apocalypse and opposing nuclear energy will become increasingly untenable. The claim that renewables can substitute for fossil fuels in high-energy societies has been repeatedly falsified for more than a half-century. Thunberg, AOC, and Extinction Rebellion leaders will eventually need to admit that we need nuclear, or face a loss of credibility and relevance.
It needs to come sooner rather than later, and Shellenberger being vocal about this could be a big part of this. His new book: Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.
Japan made a show of shutting down a bunch of nuclear reactors after Fukushima, because of public outcry over safety issues.
Then electricity prices skyrocketed, and they quietly started them back up again.
The moral. Keep your eye on the ball. Watch what they do, not what they say.
Isab at July 3, 2020 4:56 AM
France gets something like 70% of its electricity from nuclear, and has an excellent safety record.
If they can just hang tough on this, they will have a big competitive advantage over the other European countries.
David Foster at July 3, 2020 5:09 AM
How about Liquid Air Energy Storage? That's Brit tech, clean, and available for purchase now.
Plus you can install it about anywhere.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 3, 2020 12:17 PM
Thomas Edison, in his effort to defend his DC distribution system against the AC system introduced by Westinghouse and Tesla, employed some very sleazy fear-based tactics.
If today's political and social climate had existed back then, he probably would have gotten away with it.
David Foster at July 3, 2020 7:01 PM
Liquid Air Energy produces 5,000 megawatts to be used during a five hour window. On a mild day in Texas we use 50,000 megawatts....on a hot day, 75,000. Liquid Air is at best a very expensive stop gap solution which will probably never take off.
Sheep Mom at July 3, 2020 7:19 PM
What they do is buy gas from Iran.
NicoleK at July 3, 2020 9:53 PM
Liquid Air is a mid efficiency battery solution. It is not a significant power source. While it is better than most electrochemical solutions for grid based power it just makes more sense to reduce the power plant output rather than store the extra power.
Also, when you are talking about 'oil companies' you are really talking about nation states. Exxon is one of the largest privately owned producers of oil in the world. As I recall their global market share of produced crude oil is around 5%. Every other private company is even smaller. Something like 80% of produced crude oil instead comes from nationally owned oil companies. Saudi-Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Pemex (Mexico), etc. are where the real production in crude happens. So if you are talking about environmental groups taking money from 'big oil' you are actually talking about them taking money from foreign nations.
Ben at July 4, 2020 10:32 AM
I was reading about an installation in England that's rolling out in 2022 - liquid air to power 200,000 homes per day.
Scalable from 80 to 200 MW/hr at half the cost of Lithium-Ion.
Sounds like any emerging tech - expensive and limited at first and eventually becomes part of the solution, not all of it.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 4, 2020 10:43 AM
I was reading about an installation in England that's rolling out in 2022 - liquid air to power 200,000 homes per day.
Scalable from 80 to 200 MW/hr at half the cost of Lithium-Ion.
Sounds like any emerging tech - expensive and limited at first and eventually becomes part of the solution, not all of it.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 4, 2020 10:43 AM
So where do you think the power will come from to store in the liquid air? Coal, gas, uranium or unicorn farts?
Isab at July 4, 2020 12:04 PM
Unicorn farts, but only after we train them to eat lawyers.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 4, 2020 12:27 PM
It looks like I was off about lithium batteries having poor charge efficiency. They are in the +80% range. The older rechargeable batteries often had under 50% efficiency. Liquid air typically is less efficient than Li-ion (~70%) and it is less responsive. The nice thing about liquid air is it doesn't require toxic chemicals or special geographical features like pumped hydro does. It can be built anywhere without causing toxic waste issues.
But as Isab points out this is a battery technology and not a power generation technology. The energy has to come from somewhere else.
Further poking around it looks like it has become popular around natural gas liquification plants. Mainly as a way to convert some of the 'waste cold' from the plant into useful energy. There is some effort to replace natural gas peaking power plants with liquid air batteries for intermittent renewable power sources like solar or wind. But in that case you are still suffering from the high costs of those renewable sources. So how well that will spread largely depends on local government fiat.
Without a 'green energy' government directive it still makes more sense to use some other form of power generation and vary the plant output to match load instead of storing the energy.
Ben at July 4, 2020 12:39 PM
Gaaah! You're using the wrong units, which dooms any discussion you might attempt.
The MW/hr is first a botched notation. It's not "megawatts per hour", an invalid unit because the time element is inherent in the unit, "watt". It's "megawatt-hours", which is a unit of energy. A quantity, not power.
Also useless: "200,000 homes per day". Doing what, exactly? ADDING 200,000 homes to the grid per day?
If you are to speak intelligently about electrical power, you must use watts for power, and watt-hours for units of consumption.
Any grid, no matter how it is supplied, has a power limitation rated in watts. Every storage scheme also has a peak efficiency rate which is less than its limit, also.
To get an idea of how energy is generated and used in the USA, please see the graphic here.
Radwaste at July 4, 2020 3:09 PM
"If you are to speak intelligently about electrical power, you must use watts for power, and watt-hours for units of consumption."
Okay, will do.
In any case, I find the developments at Highview Power interesting. YMMV.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at July 4, 2020 4:09 PM
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