Skip to main content

Why Nuclear Energy is Common Ground in Clean Energy Policy

Matt Wald
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.

Taking action to slow climate change was a contentious idea before the election, and if the voting on November 8 created a consensus on any issue, it wasn’t this one. President-elect Trump has called for withdrawing from the COP-21 agreement made a year ago in Paris, but as COP-22 got underway Marrakesh, Morocco, more than 300 American companies sent a letter to Mr. Trump affirming their “deep commitment” to adhering to the climate accord.

But there is more common ground here than meets the eye. There are reasons why the march toward cleaner energy will continue, advancing some of the goals in Mr. Trump’s campaign platform, including energy independence, an electric system that helps a strong economy, creation or maintenance of good jobs, a sound national infrastructure, and improvement of America’s export potential. And clean air is a goal that everyone shares, regardless of position on whether climate change is caused by human activity: air with less smog, less acid rain and fewer particulates.

And yes, there will be less carbon dioxide, which some will see as a goal and others can view as a benefit of a no-regrets energy policy. Whatever the reason for taking steps that reduce air emissions, the result will be to smooth our relationship with countries that stick with the climate deal.

The companies that signed the letter (including DuPont, the Gap, eBay, and General Mills) argued that “the right action now will create jobs and boost US competitiveness.”

Among the strongest actions that can be taken along those lines is to preserve the existing U.S. reactor fleet, and to build new plants, including designs that will fit in well with an emerging energy world of intermittent renewable energy sources. New reactors can also tackle new jobs beyond electricity, including providing, carbon-free, the heat needed to run refineries, chemical plants and other industries.

Any form of clean energy, including ours, requires appropriate government policy. Wind and solar are flourishing now because they get generous support (for solar, the investors get a 30 percent tax credit, and some states chip in more, and for wind, a 2.3 cent-per-kilowatt-hour production tax credit.) Wind and solar also benefit from state-level mandates, called renewable energy portfolio standards. The Federal subsidies are scheduled to begin a phase-down soon but most of the state help will remain in place.

Nuclear power, new and existing, meets the same zero-emission goal and adds many other advantages, including tremendous economic benefits, plus grid reliability and resiliency. Yet over 10 percent of the reactor fleet has prematurely shut down, or will do so, because none of these benefits are compensated in the electricity market. Preservation of these benefits requires appropriate policies.

And the best power system is a diverse one. IHS found in a recent study that if the grid moved to a less diverse generating mix, “power price impacts would reduce US GDP by nearly $200 billion, lead to roughly one million fewer jobs, and reduce the typical household’s annual disposable income by around $2,100.’’

Strong support for nuclear power addresses priorities that everyone shares. We should not shy away from preserving and expanding these benefits.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should