Renewable energy and fossil fuel advocates have one thing in common – an unhealthy tendency to fall in love with a particular energy technology, writes Hal Harvey, founder and CEO of think tank Energy Innovation. Policymakers for their part often fall in love with particular policies. But according to Harvey, what matters is setting ambitious goals, adopting policies that reward performance and let the dynamics of the market work out how to get there.
Will nuclear power solve the world’s problems? Are solar and wind the answer to everything? Can natural gas save the day? What about biomass or clean coal?
The proper role for a nuclear advocate is being a genuine problem-solver, rather than a one-note advocate
Each of these technologies has a cadre of vocal advocates, but they are a bit myopic. The problem is that picking winners and losers based on such biases sells the country short. Technologies should be judged based on their ability to power the economy in a clean, safe, reliable, and affordable manner. Choices that ignore one of these core goals fail that basic duty.
No silver bullet
Every technology has advantages and downsides. Nuclear power, for example, offers tremendous energy density, and carbon-free, 24-hour power. But any honest assessment of nuclear power will also show profound problems—cost, siting, waste, and nuclear weapons proliferation.
Nuclear power’s future will only come about if these four issues are dealt with. A number of design ideas can help with each issue but none have been tested, much less deployed, at a reasonable cost. So the proper role for a nuclear advocate is being a genuine problem-solver, rather than a one-note advocate.
Different challenges arise with solar and wind. These clean energy technologies now provide the cheapest electricity ever offered. But they face issues with siting, variability, energy density, transmission, and more. Sound solutions exist to solve all these problems, and each has been demonstrated somewhere, but no one has combined them all into a 100 percent renewable energy grid. Policymakers must listen to solar and wind advocates, but also demand tractable solutions to these challenges.
Natural gas is plentiful and cheap, and in the U.S., remarkably accessible for heating, electricity production, and chemicals. But densely located fracking wells threaten environmental destruction, and if more than 3 percent of gas leaks anywhere in the system—from extraction and compression, to distribution and use—gas is worse than coal for the climate. And even if gas leakage fell to zero, it still creates about half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal—not enough to protect the climate.
Billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns conservative-leaning newspapers and has donated millions to Republican politicians, is building America’s largest wind farm
Coal is perhaps the most hotly contested energy technology today, benefiting from a centuries-old system that was quite literally built around the energy source. A coal plant can run 24/7, and the capital stock is already mostly in place. Calculations suggest enough coal reserves exist to power the world’s energy systems for many decades to come—but coal generates the most carbon emissions of any generation technology, and is increasingly being beaten in the markets by natural gas and renewables.
Other energy technologies similarly face biases, both in their favor and against. The key is to focus on public amenity: Energy must be reliable, affordable, and clean – then see what stacks up.
In Wyoming for example, home to 42 percent of American coal output, billionaire Philip Anschutz, who owns conservative-leaning newspapers and has donated millions to Republican politicians, is building America’s largest wind farm. This project will sell electricity to California via a new 700-mile transmission line, generate $8 billion in new investment, create hundreds of new construction jobs to replace lost coal mining jobs, and could herald a new economic boom for the state.
But a prejudice against wind almost prevented this economic boom. Wyoming proposed a steep tax on wind power, seeking wind tax hikes from $1 per megawatt-hour to $5 (no other state taxes wind). “We don’t want more wind,” one state legislator reportedly said to a developer. “We want you to burn more coal.” Luckily, both the developer and Wyoming’s Republican governor understand that a good job is a good job, and if it comes from clean, cheap electricity production, so much the better.
Love is blind (on energy policy)
Falling in love with a particular policy can also create blindness: Are tax credits the solution, or should one prefer energy subsidies? Should government support basic research, or applied? Will carbon pricing aid disadvantaged communities, or simply raise their costs of living? Should new technologies access markets, or should they face barriers?
The intelligent way to answer these questions is, again, to test each idea against the same social goals—reliability, affordability, and cleanliness. Affordability requires technology innovation and exploiting the dynamics of the free market. Clean power requires policy that puts a real value on avoiding asthma and climate change. Reliability requires alignment of both market forces and public values.
Of course, tensions exist between the goals: It may be cheap to burn coal in an old power plant, but it is certainly not clean, just as it seemed cheap for years to buy Mideast oil, until the Arab Oil Embargo laid bare our national energy security vulnerabilities. The best policies, though, hit all three goals.
Building a zero-carbon grid gets dramatically easier if policymakers took a results-oriented approach focused on optimizing the power system over prioritizing a specific technology or policy
For example, many states are transforming utility business models to compensate utilities for the services they provide—rather than for the electrons they produce or the plants they build—through performance-based regulation. This replaces capital deployment as the key metric for success, and focuses utility managers on providing core social goals. The utility uses whatever means makes the most sense to achieve that end, selecting from energy efficiency, generation, grid upgrades, purchased power, demand response, and so forth. Utility regulators would not have to make technology choices, nor do line-by-line oversight of utility expenditures.
Similarly, building a zero-carbon grid gets dramatically easier if policymakers took a results-oriented approach focused on optimizing the power system over prioritizing a specific technology or policy. The utility must “dispatch” efficiency resources to meet demand: wheeled power; fast-ramping but short-operating fossil, dispatchable renewables like hydro, biomass, and geothermal; and batteries, all in concert to offset wind and solar variability. Indeed, system optimization becomes the new utility business model in a 21st century power system, and the reward structure must point the entire company in that direction.
The clear lesson in both technology and policy is to set ambitious goals, inscribed in policy that rewards performance, and let the dynamics of the market work toward these ends.
By Hal Harvey
Hal Harvey is the founder and CEO of Energy Innovation, a San Francisco-based energy and environmental policy think tank.
[adrotate banner=”78″]
Bob Wallace says
Extreme fans of one technology. Very interesting (and often annoying) people.
I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered an extreme fan of natural gas, wind, coal, geothermal, hydro, biofuel, solar, tidal, or wave energy. Sure, some people who might be overstating their usefulness a bit and a few people who obviously had some financial stake in one of those energy sources.
But not anyone who, for years, spent large amounts of time arguing for their favorite technology. Who hijacked discussions in order to push their issue. Who worked to come up with new reasons why their favorite should be given a role even when their technology was obviously failing.
Someone might note that I did not include nuclear in my list above.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Yes, energy – and notably electricity – must be reliable, affordable, and clean! Reliable includes dispatchable, to meet demand at any time. Comparing coal/nuclear/gas kWh costs with wind kWh costs makes no sense.
Re gas, yes the 3% leak issue is often overlooked, but “densely located fracking wells threaten environmental destruction” – really? where? Sounds more like folklore, for which energy options are a fertile field – the obverse of falling in love with a technology!
And nuclear: you assert “profound problems—cost, siting, waste, and nuclear weapons proliferation” and then make the extraordinary claim that “A number of design ideas can help with each issue but none have been tested, much less deployed, at a reasonable cost.” Capital cost is certainly an issue, but in what sense have the others not demonstrably been managed ‘at reasonable cost’ and more than adequately over the last half century?
Bob Wallace says
Fukushima? That was one great big siting problem.
Waste? We have no acceptable answer. We have a couple of storage ideas but that only pushes the problem off on people who follow us. For tens of thousands of years.
Nuclear weapons proliferation? Where do you think many countries with nuclear weapons get their fissile materials? Did North Korea buy theirs off eBay?
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Fukushima: indeed. A 1960s decision. Are you implying that such lessons are till unlearned?
Wastes: total agreement re geological disposal, and no problem meanwhile, so why is this a negative for current energy policy?
Weapons proliferation: every weapons program preceded nuclear power developments, none arose from it. North Korea doesnt have nuclear power, only weapons. Uranium is all over the world, N.Korea is mainly focused on plutonium from a Russian reactor not designed to produce electricity.
For energy policy, let’s keep the focus on what is relevant!
Bob Wallace says
“Fukushima: indeed. A 1960s decision. Are you implying that such lessons are till unlearned?”
Certainly unlearned until Fukushima drowned and melted. There was a rapid review looking for other reactors that might be in danger. At least one was found IIRC. A reactor in the UK that could be flooded by storm surges (and rising seas).
And we do have reactors that have to be closed due to local flooding. So site selection has not been pristine.
“Wastes: total agreement re geological disposal, and no problem meanwhile, so why is this a negative for current energy policy?”
I do not know what you are trying to say. That said, there is no acceptable solution for nuclear waste. If there was one we would be using it and not talking about needing one.
Actually, North Korea does have one nuclear reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_North_Korea
And North Korea has uranium enrichment plants which almost certainly grew out of the reactor supplied to them by the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
That N.Korean reactor is the one I mentioned, it’s not a reactor designed for generating electricity, it’s set up for producing weapons-grade Pu. And their enrichment technology came from Pakistan, not Russia. See also: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/non-proliferation/appendices/nuclear-proliferation-case-studies.aspx
There is a widely if not universally accepted solution for high-level nuclear wastes: deep geological disposal. That is proceeding at the rate required by the amounts available and the costs of establishing repositories. Only in USA is that lagging somewhat due to Obama playing politics with the issue.
Bob Wallace says
Obviously deep geological storage is not an acceptable solution as it isn’t being used.
The failure of Yucca Mountain was not due to “Obama playing politics”. […]
Ian Hore-Lacy says
If you relate the relatively small amount of HLW to teh cost and processes of building repositories, your conclusion is wrong. And is contra virtually all national policies .
If you have another credible theory re Yucca Mountain and Harry Reid ….. not to mention current revival of the project.
Nigel West says
“Obviously deep geological storage is not an acceptable solution as it isn’t being used.”
Wrong, Finland has built their store and it is in use.
Much of the waste is from legacy military arisings in the US and UK which would have to be dealt with at some point. Also the volume of HLW arising from new nuclear will be much less than from the early days of civil nuclear power.
Karel Beckman says
Deep geological storage in use? Not yet. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/09/science/nuclear-reactor-waste-finland.html
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Finland expects to start repository operation in 2023, Sweden also in 2020s.
Military HL wastes probably a higher proportion in UK than USA, due to reprocessing. Most US HLW volume is civil.
Bob Wallace says
Is FInland willing to take the rest of the world’s highly radioactive waste?
When we’re shipping our bad stuff there then we can say that we have an acceptable solution.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
No! At present there is clear and unequivocal understanding that each country is ethically and legally responsible for its own wastes, therefore the default position is that all nuclear wastes will be disposed of in each of the 50 or so countries concerned.
However, there are some discussions about international repositories: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/international-nuclear-waste-disposal-concepts.aspx
Bob Wallace says
OK, one out of 50 countries has decided to stick their radioactive waste deep into some rock and hope it doesn’t get loose over the next many thousands of years.
49 out of 50 have no acceptable solution.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
if bob Wallace wants information [censored], see http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/storage-and-disposal-of-radioactive-waste.aspx and for actual policies: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/appendices/radioactive-waste-management-appendix-2-national-p.aspx
Bob Wallace says
From your link.
“Deep geological disposal is widely agreed to be the best solution for final disposal of the most radioactive waste produced.”
“Widely agreed” among people who are highly motivated to get the nuclear waste problem out of sight is different than widely agreed for the general public.
Again. If there was an acceptable solution then the problem would have already been solved.
I realize that nuclear advocates really want to find a solution so there will be one less reason to quit nuclear, but what is a solution for a special interest group just isn’t working in the real world.
At least, here in the West we are reducing the amount of highly radioactive waste we create per year by closing reactors.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
“widely agreed” without dissent would be closer to the mark. The only questions are regarding what is disposed – used fuel, or the HLW separated from this; and how retrievable if it’s used fuel, since about 97% of it is potential fuel for fast reactors.
No country has had intentions to put HLW of either kind into deep geological disposal at less than about 50 years from unloading, since the level of heat and radioactivity will have fallen to about 0.1% of original then, making the task much easier. Meanwhile storage – dry or under water – is straightforward, safe, and simple, as any acquaintance with it will confirm.
Bob Wallace says
Ian, you are comfortable with that solution.
A vast number of people are not.
Jeffrey Michel says
After the Chernobyl meltdown of 1987, Japan announced that it had wisely sited many of its reactors close to the ocean to reduce the effects of radiation fallout on the population from any potential accident. It had not adequately taken the inundation risks of ocean tidal waves into account, however.
Bob Wallace says
Japan was aware of the tsunami risks where they built the Fukushima reactors.
They even broke through a natural seawall during construction in order to make it easier to move in materials and failed to restore the barrier after construction.
Nigel West says
GE built the reactors, not Japan. GE is having to answer a compensation claim for their part in the design of Fukushima plant.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/11/17/faces-lawsuit-over-role-fukushima-nuclear-disaster/LHeU66Nxd1jOLCV7DhwcoN/story.html
Bob Wallace says
” Comparing coal/nuclear/gas kWh costs with wind kWh costs makes no sense.”
[…] That is exactly what happens in the real world. All the time.
Considerations start with the cost of electricity generated. And then an analysis is made to see the cost of incorporating each source into the existing grid.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
It may happen in the popular media, but any electricity supplier to customers needs to be able to meet their demand, not depend on a few MWh now and then in fits and starts.
Incorporating variable renewables into the existing grid becomes problematic and increasingly expensive at more than low levels, as Germany is helpfully showing us.
Bob Wallace says
Since the wholesale price of electricity has been falling as RE has been added I think Germany is showing us the opposite of what you claim.
In 2011 German wholesale electricity prices were over 55 euros/MWh. By late 2015 they had fallen to 30 euros/MWh.
There probably is a point at which in order to add more RE to a grid we would need to shut down paid off fossil fuel plants and build storage. That would create a temporary increase in electricity price. But that would be due only to closing that FF plant earlier than it would have otherwise aged out.
By the time we add in savings from avoided coal-produced health costs it’s highly unlikely that there would be any actual increase. Only an apparent increase if one looks selectively at the data.
Ian Hore-Lacy says
Yes German wholesale prices have fallen dramatically due to subsidised RE inputs having priority, but look at the retail prices! And how the logical supplement to VRE – gas , is made uneconomic. So they are building a whole lot more lignite and black coal capacity. Energiewende is a wonderful case study and train wreck. Fascinating! http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energiewende.aspx
Bob Wallace says
Germany is “not building a whole lot more lignite and black coal capacity”.
Several years ago (2005 to 2008) Germany decided to replace inefficient coal plants with more efficient “supercritical” plants as a way to decrease coal use and reduce emissions. The initial plan was that by 2020, 11.5 gigawatts would be built allowing 18.5 gigawatts of coal power capacity to be decommissioned.
Due to the success of renewables it appears that the 11.5 gigawatt number will be lowered by at least 3 GW. Furthermore the newer plants will be more efficient, releasing less CO2 per unit electricity produced than are the ones they are replacing. And the new coal plants are partially load-following which further cuts total emissions.
As of November 2013 some 49 power plants with a collective capacity of 7.9 GW have been submitted for decommissioning. Another 246 MW of capacity has been closed. Utilities in Germany need clearance from the government before closing and that process can take several months.
In July, 2015 it was announced that the recently completed hard coal plant in Hamm, Germany will likely never go into operation and is now apparently worthless. It seems that Hamm D and Hamm E, which have a combined capacity of 1.6 GW are redundant. This seems to be a further cut from the 8.3 GW of new that are replacing 18.5 old.
Nigel West says
“The intelligent way to answer these questions is, again, to test each idea against the same social goals—reliability, affordability, and cleanliness. ”
In the UK Government policy talks of ‘secure’ in place of ‘reliable’. Today, secure and reliable supplies of electricity socially has never been more important. Fortunately Generating plant technology today is very reliable and grids are very secure, but the energy sources used vary in security from country to country. The US is self sufficient in energy sources, however many other countries are not. Security of supply is then a big factor in Government policy decisions.
Security of supply is best served by having diverse sources of generation, not picking winners often based on technology prejudice. Diversity is established policy in the UK.
“The clear lesson in both technology and policy is to set ambitious goals, inscribed in policy that rewards performance, and let the dynamics of the market work toward these ends.”
Unfortunately the UK Government has meddled in markets too such an extent over that last decade that investors have been put off and the country now is short of generating capacity. The market has become dysfunctional and all forms of generation need support for investors to proceed. Unfortunately the market does not always deliver.