Jason Hopkins | Energy Investigator
Environmental activist Michael Shellenberger explained to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that it’s not possible to shift the country’s grid completely to renewable energy.
“I was one of the founders of, sort of, the first Green New Deal back in 2003, 2007,” Shellenberger, the founder of Environmental Progress, began. “People don’t remember President Obama, we spent about $150 billion on renewables between 2009 and 2015, and we just kept encountering the same kind of problems.”
WATCH:
Shellenberger laid out the two main problems that plague wind turbines and solar panels: unreliability and low energy density.
“They just depend on when the sun is shining and when the wind is blowing, which is 10 to 40 percent of the year,” he said, demonstrating how the intermittent energy production of wind and solar makes them unreliable sources of power. “Something people are not as aware of: the low energy density of sunlight and wind. Basically what we’ve been finding is that the lower the energy density of the fuel … the bigger the environmental impact.”
Because solar and wind produce such small amounts of energy, according to Shellenberger, they require a much larger amount of land to generate electricity.
Instead, the Environmental Progress founder touted the benefits of nuclear energy, a source of power that can generate large amounts of reliable energy while emitting zero carbon emissions. However, Shellenberger said the public has yet to fully embrace nuclear energy because they associate it with nuclear bombs, past nuclear accidents and a desire to use energy that harmonizes with the natural world.
“That turns out to be a bad idea because the more natural resource we use, the worse it is for the natural environment,” he said.
Nuclear power plant Ohu near Landshut, Bavaria, Germany. Shutterstock
As environmental activists become more alarmed about the threat of climate change, many are re-evaluating how they perceive nuclear power. The U.S. nuclear industry currently supplies about 20 percent of the country’s total electricity, but it provides roughly 60 percent of its zero-carbon electricity. A growing number of climate change-oriented lawmakers are now passing subsidies and support programs to keep nuclear plants in operation. (RELATED: Lawmakers Overwhelmingly Vote To Modernize US Nuclear Fleet)
Shellenberger went on to say it was “very disappointing” that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s widely publicized Green New Deal does not include provisions for nuclear energy.
Ocasio-Cortez’s original FAQ document on the Green New Deal, in fact, called for a phase out of nuclear power. However, following the botched roll out of the deal, her team took the anti-nuclear language off their website.
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Save the planet? Planet is safe already. And mankind if safe if we avoid climate policies like big governments and confiscatory taxation.
Love at the 3:06 mark, “They must have consulted scientists.” Smirk – “I don’t think so.”
Energy density, is correctly identified as a major issue. The other is capital , it is simply not possible to beat gas turbine efficiency, they are cheap, reliable, scalable, and the least Capital intensive. Anyone who can run a spreadsheet can figure this out. It boils down to cost per KWH. The Danes have been using wind for electrical generation since the eighties, that northern peninsula is always windy in the same direction and there are no trees. There it actually works.
Its a step in the right direction. . Now there was a mention about the role of media. Do we consider that the reporters and journalists are all working to destroy the economy so that Communism Mark two can be accepted, or is it simply a case of big empty sheets or empty air time has to be filled with something, and scare stories sell .
MJE
“7 million die from the smoke of burning fossil fuels”
Steve Milloy says that’s false.
Technically, Steve Milloy would be correct. The WHO (world Health Organization. Not the music group) 7 million number is for those who die prematurely each year from microscopic pollutants in the air (not necessarily all from fossil fuel smoke specifically). This is primarily attributed to fossil fuel (primarily does not mean exclusively)
According to the WHO, The primary sources of ambient or outdoor air pollution include industrial and motor vehicle emissions and household heating. The major sources of household or indoor pollution are the burning of fossil fuels, such as solid fuels in open fire cooking stoves, as well as second-hand smoke from tobacco products.
What drives WUWT bloggers to volunteer their opinions about nuclear? There are plenty of ‘experts’ whose full-time jobs involve understanding nuclear several planes of understanding above the average blogger.
Nuclear technical issues are so we’ll understood that they are not a problem. The biggest problem is the multitudes of ill-informed, opinionated, self-described experts like Shellenberger who have nothing of value to contribute, just more words and more opinions. We are awash with these. They have little capacity for positive value, much capacity for harm.
Instead of blogging badly informed opinion, you should study the wealth of technical literature to assure yourselves that there are no real problems for nuclear to be expanded. France has demonstrated many answers about national penetration and they are really positive for those bloggers whose minds are still open and not poisoned by decades of strong propaganda from the uneducated. Geoff
What drives nuclear reactor builders to describe the tech they use in the way they do? Well, exactly the same thing that drives renewables consortia to describe wind turbines the way they do: Money. Nobody ever got rich by pointing out the flaws in their products.
Anyone who cares to study nuclear engineering will soon realize that existing plant has two major safety issues. Interestingly, neither are nuclear in nature. They are the use of a pressurized, volatile coolant, and the use of camera flashbulb metal (!) as fuel rod cladding. The reason the manufacturers don’t want to change from these designs is not because they cannot, but because the designs have become entrenched in their way of thinking and working.
The same kind of problem exists in the IT industry, where the parlous state of software security stems overwhelmingly from the insistence on the use of just two products, C and SQL. Again, these products have become so heavily entrenched in programmers’ mindset and way of working that ousting them is incredibly difficult. Ask a programmer if these are bad products from a security perspective, and the answer will be a resounding no. You may even get an angry response, much the same as if you criticized wind turbines to a Green. Yet, the truth is they are bad products. What’s more, you don’t even need to be an expert programmer to figure this out.
In either case, asking a professional working in the industry is not likely to get you a meaningful answer. To get at the truth you need to ask someone who has no vested interests.
Bloggers and the like may or may not be knowledgeable, but they are more likely to to present an unbiased version of the facts, one which is not a product of entrenched ways of thinking.
Ian Mac,
What a lousy response you wrote.
The name of the game is not to satisfy your uneducated thirst for knowledge of more dirty nuclear cover-ups.
The name of the game is encouragement of the key nuclear expert professionals to better produce the goods that are demanded by the vast majority of consumers of energy.
The test is not from public opinion polls. It is from the adverse reaction that society would face if suddenly deprived of electricity, an essential good in modern society. Why fight against it?
Geoff
for someone railing so hard against “ill-informed” you are showing yourself to be rather ill-informed, Geoff.
What drives WUWT bloggers to volunteer their opinions about nuclear? … The biggest problem is the multitudes of ill-informed, opinionated, self-described experts like Shellenberger who have nothing of value to contribute, just more words and more opinions
Shellenberger is not a WUWT blogger. His opinion was given on Fox News to host Tucker Carlson which was then quoted by an article written by Jason Hopkins. Hopkins is also not a WUWT blogger, he writes for the daily wire. The daily wire article was reposted here at WUWT by Charles the moderator. Charles, by posting the article, would be considered a WUWT blogger but did not offer any opinion about nuclear or what Shellenberger or Hopkins had to say on the subject.
Nowhere did I infer Shellenberger to be a WUWT blogger.
Why did you make that up?
Fake blogging? Geoff
You said “What drives WUWT bloggers to volunteer their opinions about nuclear?” the only opinion being volunteered by the blog post that you were replying to is that of Shellenberger. So yes, you did infer Shellenberger to be a WUWT blogger by your own opening statement of your rant. Run away from your own words all you want, but *that* is what you did.
The precautionary principle says we should abandon power entirely, just, you know, to be on the safe side…
America needs to produce a lot of energy if we are going to be able to continue to live the lifestyles we are accustomed to. This AOC Green New Deal is STUPID.
America has over 500 years of coal in the ground With CCU https://youtu.be/RQRQ7S92_lo coal can be combusted and put into the atmosphere less CO2 than a natural gas power plant.
Natural gas needs to be consumed for building space heating and by industry http://www.SidelSystems.com efficiently. Increased energy efficiency = Reduced CO2 emissions
Our oil needs to be used for transportation. ( cant catch CO2 coming out of a tailpipe )
Promotors of reusable energy make the mistake (intentional or not) of not accounting for all of the energy consumed. Instead they typically account for only energy directly used to make and install the components. They don’t account for the energy directly and indirectly consumed by the builders, administrators, maintenance workers, and support personnel to maintain their lifestyle. What part of the energy consumed by the clerk at the grocery store used by each employee should be included, etc.? Essentially everything has an energy cost. The earth does not charge.
Accounting for ALL of the energy involved is essentially impossible, certainly impractical. Instead, the energy cost is easily and accurately accounted for by a proxy which is the dollar cost. Dollar cost is readily available. Example for a 5 mW installation:
Installed cost @ur momisugly $1.61E6/mW = $8.05E6
Operation & maintenance for 20 years @ur momisugly $210,000/yr = $4.2E6
Total cost = $12.2E6
Output:
5 mW wind turbine, avg output 1/3 nameplate, 20 yr life, electricity @ur momisugly wholesale 3 cents per kwh produces $8.8E6.
Add the cost of energy storage facility and energy availability loss during storage/retrieval, or initial and maintenance cost of standby CCGT for low wind periods.
Solar voltaic and solar thermal are even worse with special concern for disposal and/or recycling at end-of-life (about 15 yr for PV).
Without the energy provided by other sources, renewables cannot exist.
I think Shellenberger deerves a lot of credit. He isn’t the only one blinded by the idealistic hope for renewables. But he is one of only a few honest enough to admit they were wrong and take a strong public stance against renewables and for nuclear.
He provides a strong argument in favor of nuclear in this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciStnd9Y2ak
And it is those on the left who have seen the light who are most likely to be listened to by the still true-believers on the left.
It would be hard to escape from the limited mind that permitted approval of green propaganda from an early age. So why the hero worship for one not so bright? Similar USA public mental deficiency that lionises dumbasses like AOC and numerous air head Home plywood (spell checker for Hollywood) celebs.
Geoff