Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Vox author David Roberts starts well by pointing out renewable energy is not ready to power the world, and makes a passionate argument for increased funding of renewable energy innovation. But like a lot of greens, he completely ignores the nuclear option.
Many technologies needed to solve the climate crisis are nowhere near ready
Getting to net-zero carbon emissions will require rapid, radical innovation, a new report says.
By David Roberts @drvox david@vox.com Jul 14, 2020, 9:30am EDT
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Reaching global net-zero is necessary to stabilize the atmosphere at any temperature. Otherwise, it continues warming. “The difference between one and a half degrees, two degrees, and two and a half degrees [of warming] is functionally just the amount of time you have to achieve net zero,” says Julio Friedmann, an energy researcher at the Center for Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Failing to reach net zero means failing to stabilize the atmosphere.
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From an engineering perspective, the central question is whether the tools available are up to the task required of them.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has recently set out to answer that question, under the rubric of its Energy Technology Perspectives (ETP) program, which this month issued its latest Clean Energy Innovation report.
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Many technologies that will be needed for deep decarbonization are nowhere near ready
The IEA begins by determining how ready current clean energy technologies are to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS), which would reach global net-zero emissions by 2070 and stabilize global temperature rise at 1.8°C (along with meeting several other sustainable development goals).
In the energy sector, IEA identifies four key approaches to decarbonization that are lagging technologically:
- Electrification of end uses, particularly heating and transportation
- Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)
- Low-carbon hydrogen and hydrogen fuels
- Bioenergy
Within those four approaches, IEA assesses more than 400 separate technologies. What is remarkable, and disheartening, is how few of them are on track to meet the SDS goals.
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Disappointingly, the IEA executive summary does not mention nuclear power either, though nuclear energy receives several positive mentions in the main body of the report (available via the executive summary).
If climate change is such a desperate emergency, we haven’t got time to mess about with moonshots and high risk innovation gambles. We need to focus on a 1970s solution we know will work, not a 2070s solution which has not been developed yet, and which might never realise the hopes of proponents.
Going nuclear unequivocally works, because it has already been done. France proved in the 1970s you can convert from coal to nuclear. France has a good safety record, and they still get most of their energy from nuclear power plants.
Just copying the 1970s French nuclear programme worldwide, putting surviving 1970s French engineers in charge of a global nuclear mass production programme, going nuclear would knock at least 30% off global CO2 emissions in as little as one to two decades – far more than has been achieved by almost half a century of renewable energy efforts.
Even if you don’t understand climate science, or if you believe global warming is a major threat to the future of mankind, the widespread lack of climate activist enthusiasm for nuclear energy is the point where green arguments blatantly stop making sense.
A switch to nuclear energy would not have to be permanent. Even if the end goal is still renewable energy, going nuclear would buy the world the lifetime of the new nuclear plants, 50 – 90 years of ultra low CO2 emissions, loads of extra time to develop all those experimental renewable energy technologies.
Good argument.
Going nuclear is the only way the greens could show that their climate alarmism is not a total lie from start to finish.
Fairy and Unicorn farts haven’t been discovered, seen or captured yet.
“Failing to reach net zero means failing to stabilize the atmosphere.”
The stupidity of that statement is just mind=boggling. As if there has been ANY period in which the planet’s atmosphere is “stable.” And you had better hope that the atmosphere doesn’t become “stable,” Mr. Roberts. Because our weather, the rain (to assist the crop growth), the snow (to sometimes make water for drinking and other uses), the wind (which helps power those wind turbines you so hope to have provide all of our electricity, though such dreams are nothing but pipe-dreams), all depend upon some sort of instability and air mass movement in the atmosphere. Without our weather, we all WOULD die, there would be nothing to talk about otherwise.
It’s not about climate (the useful idiots may continue to believe). If it was the nuclear option would be full on as the only viable option.Think! Time to fight this stupidity face to face.
Small point: France did not really convert from coal to nuclear – it never had much coal to start with – de Gaulle’s nuclear revolution was more about insulating France from Arab oil price hikes. De Gaulle hated the Arabs.
I sense there is a growing realisation among us realists, that anything which helps man to be kind i.e more mankind, is rejected as anathema by the anti mankind Greens.
The issue ahead of us, is not a technical challenge, it is an ideological one.
We listen on a daily basis to the shrills mostly state funded, think national broadcasters, telling us CO2 is the number one threat to humanity. The evidence from biology and historic markers, such as ice cores etc, tell us the exact opposite. CO2 is not only essential for life but that we are at the bottom of the volume in the atmosphere needed, to ensure mankind and all life forms survive the next ice age.
We need to educate the upcoming generations about reality and stop the doom mongers pushing their false Co2 is bad meme.
When we stop people fighting invented imaginary enemies, then and only then will we have time and capacity to address the real enemies in society.
Poverty, hunger, injustice, unfairness and all the other scourges of society will not be resolved by removing Co2 producing energy systems. it is exactly the opposite.
Security of future generations (the ice age will come) will not be improved by dialling CO2 down to near extinction levels of sub 200 PPM. Sadly, that is the destination of the siren voices demanding not just net zero CO2, but atmospheric capture and sequestration of current CO2.
They have no care, about runaway CO2 sequestration projects being released into the environment? Anything, other than nuclear of course, that reduces CO2 production, or better still reduces CO2 in the atmosphere, is considered a good thing to these mankind eco system destroyers.
The evidence is coming in all around us .
More CO2 is good.
it is feeding the worlds eco system,s nourishing the planet and giving hope to poor farmers all across the world.
The next time you meet one of the Constantly Offended Green Socialists one of the COGS, simply ask them, what level of CO2 in the atmosphere is better, 200 PPM or 500 PPM. Then ask them to explain their answer.
Expect to receive an uneducated less than sensible response..
The echinococcae have voted en masse to reward those who have increased the CO2 content of the atmosphere. The plant kingdom supports this ‘carbon enriching’ initiative, the animal kingdom is coming along into agreement, the only exceptions being a few cats, who walk by themselves.
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Renewables will never be able to supply power in the manner required for a modern society .
For some that is not a problem but a ‘advantage ‘ of this approach because they oppose that very society.
We have seen this type of argument before, and it is just as wrong-headed now as it always was. And please, just stop with the “France did it” retardedness. It isn’t a rational argument. We aren’t France, and this isn’t the 70’s and 80’s.
The only reason we should consider nuclear is if it can provide us with reasonably affordable energy, not to placate the Greenies, or even to piss them off, because apparently it can do both. Meanwhile, the elephant in the room is coal, which I guess to the nuclear fanatics is a naughty word. They don’t even want to say it, let alone think about building modern-day, reliable, and affordable coal plants, along with gas of course.
CO2 levels were so low that the land plants were starving and heading for extinction, so they created humankind to save them.
(Where do you think fruit comes from and why?)
This is just as good as any other creation myth. /joke.
Dontcha know Ma Gaia invented humans to save the whole biome by burning hydrocarbons ‘cuz her own way of producing CO2 from carbonates was not keeping up with her voracious constituents, the whole plant kingdom, which has conspired behind her back with the sun to sequester carbon?
There may be another explanation for humans
but you won’t get Ma Gaia to buy it; she’s been worrying about dropping atmospheric CO2 for a long time.
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This conspiracy of the plants and the sun to almost irreversibly sequester carbon as carbonates will ultimately succeed unless the human race succeeds in keeping its eye on the ball, that is our most fundamental duty, to enrich the atmosphere with carbon dioxide.
How are we doing at this duty? Surprisingly well and the plant kingdom is flourishing.
But there are those who would have us shirk our duty; they lie and are deplored by every living plant. I mean it gets quite vicious; you should read a little on their chatboards.
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Actually, we’re here to increase the entropy of the universe.
Government funding is not efficient.
Any solution must be from free market with no tax breaks or subsidies.
If renewable energy then succeeds I’m all for it, but presently it cannot compete. If it could compete it would already be everywhere and no new ng plants or coal plants would be built.
Please look beyond the US and (perhaps) Europe. There will be large amounts of nuclear power in future – primarily in China and perhaps India – supplementing or replacing coal generation. If you look both around the world and in the US/Europe, nuclear with current technology requires very large utilities with the capacity to build and manage many (20-30 or more) units. Apart from EDF there were none operating on that scale in most of the world. Utilities operating small numbers of nuclear units – US, Japan, Germany, UK, Canada, etc – were usually inefficient at either building or incompetent in operating them.
The nemesis of nuclear power in most of the world was not renewables but gas. CCGTs are cheap to build with short lead times and flexible in operation. It is only countries with very limited gas resources that will contemplate nuclear on a large scale. If nuclear power is to have any future it has be small modular units that can be run in a relatively flexible regime and can be built with shortish lead times. That is the gap that gas plants have filled and the only option for nuclear is to adjust to meet the same requirements.
Advocates of nuclear power seem to spend more time arguing with each other about the “best” technology, rather than responding to the economic incentives and power system requirements for middle and income countries around the world.
From the article: “Reaching global net-zero is necessary to stabilize the atmosphere at any temperature. Otherwise, it continues warming.”
That is an unsubstantiated assertion presented as fact.
Alarmists have a very bad habit of doing this. I think just about 100 percent of Alarmists are guilty of believing in this kind of distortion of reality. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be Alarmists.
Another thing about nukes … once you own one your fuel costs become insignificant. Its all about the cost of capital. So you can waste energy all you want. Without emitting CO2, I might add.
I am sure there is a power source that does not require work and an opponent can be defeated by shadow boxing. It’s all in the footwork. So dazzle the way into a pure world where nothing changes and the biological world dies from homeostasis.
“Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS)”
Why do green agree to store carbon (I guess they actually mean CO2), but they do not like nuclear energy because of nuclear waste. No matter how long you store CO2, it will not change into another substance. It stays the same forever. Its ability to heat the planet does not change. You have to make sure that it storage place will store it tightly forever. Nuclear waste does change over time. Okay, it is a long time, but in the end the waste is not as dangerous as when it came out of the reactor.
You say “renewable energy is not ready”.
What is “renewable” about it?