By Robert Bryce
Thursday, May 30, 2019
Climate change is the No. 1 issue for Democrats, with a
recent poll showing 82 percent of Democratic voters listed it as their top
priority. To appeal to those voters, contenders for the 2020 Democratic
presidential nomination routinely call climate change an “existential threat”
to the nation and the world. But amid all their rhetoric and promises of
massively expensive plans to tackle the problem, these same Democrats — with
the notable exception of Senator Cory Booker — steadfastly refuse to utter two
critical words: nuclear power.
The Democrats’ disdain for nuclear energy deserves
attention, because there is no credible pathway toward large-scale
decarbonization that doesn’t include lots of it. That fact was reinforced
Tuesday, when the International Energy Agency published a report declaring that
without more nuclear energy, global carbon dioxide emissions will surge and
“efforts to transition to a cleaner energy system will become drastically
harder and more costly.”
How costly? The IEA estimates that “$1.6 trillion in
additional investment would be required in the electricity sector in advanced
economies from 2018 to 2040” if the use of nuclear energy continued to decline.
That, in turn, would mean higher prices, as “electricity supply costs would be
close to $80 billion higher per year on average for advanced economies as a
whole.”
The report makes it clear that solar and wind energy
cannot fill the gap left by the decline of the nuclear sector. Among the
reasons cited by the Paris-based agency is land-use conflicts, a problem that
is evident in Europe and across the U.S. The IEA says that “resistance to
siting wind and, to a lesser extent, solar farms is a major obstacle to scaling
up renewables capacity.” To take one example, last month, in Illinois, the
Dewitt County Board voted against a wind project that would have covered more
than 12,000 acres of land with 67 wind turbines standing nearly 600 feet high.
To take another, earlier this month, in Indiana, the Tippecanoe County
Commission passed a zoning ordinance that prohibits the installation of
industrial-scale wind turbines.
By my count, since 2015, about 230 government entities
from Maine to California have moved to reject or restrict wind projects. And an
increasing number of rural communities are fighting large solar projects, too.
On May 9, the town board of Cambria, N.Y. (population: 6,000), unanimously
rejected a proposed 100-megawatt solar project. If built, the $210 million
project would have covered about 900 acres with solar panels. Cambria town
supervisor Wright Ellis, who has held that position for 27 years, told me, “We
don’t want it. We are opposed to it.” Among the reasons Ellis gave me was that
the project would result in a “permanent loss of agricultural land” and
potentially reduce the value of some 350 nearby homes.
At the same time that an increasing number of rural
communities are fighting the encroachment of large-scale renewable projects,
the U.S. is facing a wave of nuclear-reactor retirements. Nine reactors in the
U.S. are slated to be retired over the next three years, and the IEA estimates
that domestic nuclear capacity could shrink by more than half in the next 20
years. The agency points to the many challenges facing the nuclear sector,
including increased regulations, low-cost natural gas, and competition from
subsidized renewables.
The timing of the IEA report is particularly relevant for
New York City, which gets about 25 percent of its electricity from the two
reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center in Buchanan, N.Y. Next April, Indian
Point’s Unit 2 reactor will be permanently shuttered. In April 2021, its
remaining reactor, Unit 3, will likewise be retired. When those reactors close,
their output will largely be replaced by three gas-fired power plants, which is
no surprise: Whenever nuclear reactors are shuttered, they get replaced by
plants that burn natural gas, and that means increased emissions of carbon
dioxide.
In 2013, when Michael Bloomberg was mayor, his office
issued a report that estimated closing Indian Point and replacing it with
gas-fired generation would “increase New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions
by approximately 15 percent.” It also said the city “depends on Indian Point
for reliability as congested transmission lines limit power imports from more
distant locations.” But current mayor — and Democratic presidential hopeful —
Bill de Blasio steadfastly refuses to acknowledge Indian Point’s importance, or
the potential of nuclear power in general. Last month, de Blasio unveiled his
$14 billion NYC Green New Deal plan, which aims to cut New York City’s emissions
by 30 percent by 2030. With the looming loss of Indian Point, that 30 percent
goal will effectively become 45 percent.
Another Democratic contender, Beto O’Rourke, has dubbed
climate change “our greatest threat” and says he will “mobilize $5 trillion” to
cut domestic greenhouse-gas emissions to zero by 2050. The word “nuclear” does
not appear anywhere on his website, just as it’s absent from nearly every other
Democratic presidential candidate’s site. That’s a shame, because the IEA’s
report is just the latest in a long line of scientific papers pointing to the
need for nuclear energy. In 2014, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
declared that achieving deep cuts in emissions will “require more intensive
use” of low-emission technologies “such as renewable energy [and] nuclear
energy.”
This is, frankly, one of the biggest and longest-running
disconnects in American politics: The leaders of the Democratic party insist
that the U.S. must make big cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions because of the
threat posed by climate change, but for nearly five decades, they have either
ignored or professed outright opposition to nuclear energy. The last time the
party’s platform contained a positive statement about nuclear power was way
back in 1972.
America’s top Democrats repeatedly tout the need for
“clean” energy and massive deployments of wind and solar power, but by denying
the role that nuclear energy must play in any successful decarbonization
efforts, they are ignoring the scientific consensus. If they truly care about
the dangers posed by climate change, they should stand up and tell the truth
about the need for nuclear energy. Until that happens, their various plans to
address the issue will be impossible to take seriously.
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