NEI Nuclear Notes

Energy experts are at war over a radical assertion that by mid-century the United States will be able to meet all its energy needs with wind, solar and hydro power. The claim was made in 2015 by four academic researchers , led by Mark Z. Jacobson, for the continental United States, and it asserts that those renewables will replace not just the coal and natural gas used to make electricity, but also the gasoline and diesel that run cars and trucks, and the gas used in home heating. The paper is regularly cited by environmentalists who claim that the current fleet of U.S. nuclear reactors could close without any consequences to grid reliability. But last week, a group of prominent researchers, some from Stanford and UC-Berkeley, and others from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Carnegie Mellon and other mainstream organizations, published a second paper that said that while they support the expanded use of renewables, Professor Jacobson et al. were dreaming....

Here in a Washington that's preoccupied with political spectacle, it can be easy to miss important details about the business of government that really matter. One of those is coming up next week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) holds a two-day technical conference about electricity markets in the Northeastern U.S.  Since policymakers in Washington have not been able to find consensus on a comprehensive energy policy for the country, states have shown leadership in trying to ensure that the electricity system of the future will meet their needs. For some time, state governments have adopted renewable portfolio standards (RPS) to spur the growth of wind and solar to meet environmental policy goals. More recently, states like Illinois and New York have enacted similar programs to preserve nuclear power plants , in order to support nuclear energy's unique package of grid stability, zero emissions and fuel supply diversity. How these state policies are...

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior director of policy analysis and strategic planning at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald . Senator Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t like nuclear power anywhere, now also doesn’t like it at Indian Point Energy Center . This shouldn’t surprise anybody, but Mr. Sanders is also against climate change, and against fossil fuels. The positions are impossible to reconcile. We’re not the only ones who have noticed. Bernie Sanders climate plan would actually increase carbon emissions https://t.co/iwB6KemQTT — Mike Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 7, 2015 A persistent idea is that energy from wind and sun will replace fossil and everything else. And for years, New York has had an aggressive plan to use more renewable energy. But it is just a plan. According to a national survey by the Energy Department’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, released earlier this month, New York aimed to have about 9.5 million megawa...

Yesterday, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, General Electric’s Jeff Immelt and other big name CEOs who are members of the American Energy Innovation Council released a report that makes five important recommendations for US energy policy . Why did they do this? As business leaders, we feel that America’s current energy system is deficient in ways that cause serious harm to our economy, our national security, and our environment. To correct these deficiencies, we must make a serious commitment to modernizing our energy system with cleaner, more efficient technologies. Such a commitment should include both robust, public investments in innovative energy technologies as well as policy reforms to deploy these technologies on a large scale. By tapping America’s entrepreneurial spirit and longstanding leadership in technology innovation, we can set a course for a prosperous, sustainable economy—and take control of our energy future. Is nuclear included as an innovative energy technology?...

William Tucker, author of Terrestrial Energy (his latest book "about nuclear energy, global warming and the threat to the environment"), shared his thoughts at the American Spectator about what it means to be renewable as well as what renewable mandates may do to the country . Here are a few nuggets: What is a renewable portfolio? Well, it's what we used to call an "unfunded mandate." The premise is that the government has perfect foresight on where our energy future is going and as good legislators it's their responsibility to hasten its arrival. Corporations and utilities, you see, are generally too greedy and stupid to perceive the future so they have to be prodded on their way. In their wisdom, the legislators will mandate that by 2000-whatever the state or nation shall derive XX percent of its electricity from "renewable sources." It's up to the utilities to do the job. California pioneered this strategy in the 1990s but 26 states have n...

From the Toledo Blade : Gov. Ted Strickland's energy proposal calls for Ohio's electric utilities to invest heavily in renewable and advanced energy, but it remains to be seen how much of a hammer the state would swing to make it happen. The administration has not said what would happen to a utility if it fails to meet the requirement that 25 percent of its power supply come from "advanced energy'' by 2025. That category would include fuel cell, clean coal, and nuclear technology as well as "green'' sources like solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and landfill gases. "We want that standard to be firm, but we also understand that it would be desirable for us to have a kind of flexibility as we move toward achieving that standard,'' Mr. Strickland said. "I would expect the [Public Utilities Commission of Ohio] to continue to monitor the efforts toward achieving that standard.'' In addition to the broader 25 percent-by-2025-s...