Atomic Insights

Atomic energy technology, politics, and perceptions from a nuclear energy insider who served as a US nuclear submarine engineer officer

Solar energy

Why are many nuclear advocates turning against large scale wind and solar energy?

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On Friday, a well-respected energy industry observer posed an important question on Twitter.

Michael Liebreich
@MLiebreich
Replying to @tder2012 @Daniel_W_See and 4 others

Answer. The. Question:

Why have you concluded that attacking cheap wind and solar is the best way to help nuclear?

Please explain, because from where I sit it’s pretty darn clear: the more you thorium boys attack renewables, the more you set back your cause. It’s absurd.

Aside: Despite all you might hear about Twitter, there is an active and serious set of users who engage in important, often open and informative discussions about energy technology and policy. It is a medium with great utility for helping achieve my communication goals. End Aside.

Michael Liebreich is the founder of New Energy Finance, which was acquired by Bloomberg in 2009 and renamed Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He continues serving as Chairman of the Advisory Board at BNEF.

I’ve had the opportunity to hear Liebreich speak about the future of energy at BNEF conferences; he is a thoughtful, provocative speaker who includes a major role for advanced nuclear energy systems in the long-term energy future. He is not as positive about the near term ability of conventional nuclear power plants to retain their current market share.

He’s not alone in supporting advanced nuclear research and development while challenging the viability of existing nuclear power plants. He’s also not alone in classifying wind and solar as cheap and renewable.

I took his question seriously, and put some thought into my replies. Twitter has a fairly tight limit on the length of its tweets, but it has a threading capability that many use to expand the available space when they have a lot of information to share or when they feel particularly passionate about a specific topic.

Those passionate threads are often known as “rants” to the frequent users. Some of the more pertinent and well-written rants get shared widely and achieve almost cult status.

I was aiming for that result with the following response – which required several separate, threaded posts. For brevity, I’ve eliminated header and footer information between each tweet.

The tweets are quoted, so some may be missing an article or two; that’s one of the ways to fit thoughts within the character limits of a tweet.

Rod Adams
@Atomicrod
Replying to @MLiebreich @tder2012 and 5 others
I am opposed to continuing generous subsidies for “cheap” wind and solar projects. In many of the best production areas, there is so much opportunistic capacity that market prices drop to unsustainably low levels when the weather is favorable.

In a rational market, low price signals would slow or halt capacity additions until demand increases. However, 2.4 cents per kilowatt-hour guaranteed plus the opportunity to collect higher amounts if lucky enough to be operating during high demand is incentive to keep building.

Because the incentive is based on production without any reference to need in particular locations, developers naturally choose high wind locations, even if there is no local demand. Then they demand preferential grid access & new transmission lines.

I’m not opposed to wind and solar. I’m a sailor and love wind driven transportation. I’m just angry with people who keep telling us how cheap wind and solar are getting all year long and then, at the last minute, engage in a shady deal with oil exporters to extend tax credits

Finally, analysts seem to agree that low priced natural gas is largely responsible for disinterest in nuclear. Low price is result of too much supply for demand. A major reason supply is currently too high is displacement by wind & solar. Adds to available gas supply

Liebreich’s question was posted on Friday and I had responded on Saturday morning. I diidn’t really expect any response from him during the weekend, but when the working day on Monday was nearly over, I decided to follow through to find out what he thought of my response.

That was when I learned that Liebreich had decided that I was not worth his attention.

I only unmuted you because someone I follow got lured into a thread with you. You persist in calling renewables “unreliables”, show no understanding of the economics of networks and storage, espouse a variety of conspiracy theories and don’t answer the question. So goodbye again.

I’d like some serious feedback and advice. Should I change my approach? Is it really a communications foul to call wind and solar “unreliable?”

Sure, it is meant as criticism, but isn’t “renewable” simply a brand meant to put a favorable spin on an industrial technology with known limitations and widespread environmental impact?

Does documenting historical examples showing coordinated efforts to slow nuclear energy development really amount to espousing “a variety of conspiracy theories?”

During the past few months, I’ve begun wondering if I am doing more harm than good. Should I withdraw from the serious discussion about energy supplies and policies and save myself the angst? Or should I listen more carefully and find less offensive ways of sharing what I have learned about how one of the world’s largest and most impactful industries operates?

Will being nicer make it easier for people to pay attention to my serious thoughts and observations?

Recently, I chose to stop writing for Forbes. Some of our differences stemmed from a mistake that I made and corrected with a public apology.

The decision to sever our professional relationship, though, came when the editors decided that it was unfair and inaccurate for me to use the term “antinuclear” to describe a specific group of organizations.

The organizations that I lumped together as “antinuclear groups” were the signatories of the agreement with PG&E to close the Diablo Canyon Power Plant.

That agreement, known as the Joint Proposal, was signed by the following groups: International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, Coalition of California Utility Employees, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council, California Energy Efficiency Industry Council and Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility.

Initially, my Forbes editor replaced “antinuclear” with “environmental” and then published the post. I pointed out that there were several organizations on the list that did not even make a pretense of being an environmental group. I made the case that “antinuclear” was a more accurate description of groups that have joined together to close a power plant that produces one fifth of California’s clean electricity.

When they decided to respond to my challenge by using the collective term “environmental and labor groups” suggested by PG&E press releases, I decided it was time for me to focus my communications efforts in other venues where accuracy is more valued.

It used to baffle me to find people who claim to be focused on protecting the environment fighting a power source with such an excellent environmental record.

It no longer confuses me. I’ve learned that the antinuclear movement was branded as “environmental” by skilled propagandists. They cleverly took advantage of the popularity of environmental causes and purchased the favor of group leaders by providing resources to increase their reach and influence.

Non profit group leaders with national level aspirations spend almost as large a fraction of their time raising funds as politicians do.

Oops, there I go again. I suppose I should work on breaking that darned habit of exposing “conspiracy” when talking about a logical business move to paint a competitor in a negative light.

Self-Described Antinuclear, Pro-Renewable Former Vermont Legislator Claims “We were angels, doing God’s work.”

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Tony Klein, a former Vermont legislator who played an important role in Vermont energy law creation during the last decade, recently gave a fascinating talk at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Vermont.

Fortunately for those of us with a deep interest in energy politics, the talk was competently recorded for posterity and world-wide distribution. Audience interest and participation in his talk was stimulated by an unplanned coincidence; he spoke about a week after Vermont, like most of New England, suffered from widely distributed power outages.

Klein’s talk lasts about an hour, but it will be time well-invested for those seeking to gain insights into how renewable energy advocates carried the water for Green Mountain Power in its quest to dominate Vermont’s electricity supply system.

What information did Tony Klein share?

Klein began his talk by describing his entry into the energy production conversation as an activist in the antinuclear movement and his personal development as a member of the ‘back to the land” movement.

Aside: That migration of liberal utopians to Vermont made a big impact starting in the late 1960s and 1970s with continuing influence ever since.

There is a reasonable chance that you will watch White Christmas in the near future. There is a revealing exchange about Vermont politics in that 1954 film.

Bing Crosby: “So tell me, what do you think would be a novelty up here in Vermont?”

Danny Kaye: “Who knows, maybe we can dig up a Democrat.”

It’s probably an understatement to note that “back to the land” movement helped to alter Vermont’s political leanings. End Aside.

Klein describes how he moved from his activist roots and began working in the energy industry as a marketer for Blue Flame Gas. One of his tasks there was to develop a program to convince customers to convert from electric water heaters to natural gas water heaters.

The company wanted to reduce the sharp swings in seasonal demand. He suggested a program to his bosses that would convert customers from electric water heaters to propane or gas water heaters. His company worked with electric utility companies that were interested in reducing electricity sales to provide new hydrocarbon-burning water heaters with financing repaid via electricity bills.

When he left that job he formed a lobbying group that represented independent power producers, Renewable Energy Vermont and Efficiency Vermont.

In 2002, he took advantage of an open seat created by redistricting and was elected to serve in the state legislature, representing east Montpelier and Middlesex. He held his seat for seven 2-year terms.

He began serving on the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee during his second term and was the chairman of that Committee for his final four terms. He humbly called himself a witness to Vermont’s energy system transformation. A more accurate term might be be “leading actor” or “player.”

At least three times during the talk, Tony claims that he and his compatriots believed that they were “angels, doing God’s work.” He expresses a fair amount of contrition for leading a energy supply revolution that seems to be failing with uncomfortable consequences.

He explains how he decided not to run for another term because he just couldn’t deal with all of the negativity and finger-pointing that was growing in intensity as the results of his numerous legislative efforts became increasingly apparent.

Just before the 19 minute time mark, he mentions that the room would not have been large enough to contain the audience if he he was still serving as Chair of the House Natural Resources and Energy Committee. He noted that there would be a “whole lot of people who didn’t like me and would accuse me of a lot of different things.”

During the period from 1998 – 2014, the Vermont legislature passed 18 separate acts that Klein describes as having had a major impact on its energy supply choices. He says, “they were all passed unanimously – except for 1, 2, 3 – 6 of them.”

Warning – please do not take a sip of hot coffee around the 28 minute mark. Right after that Klein claims that Vermont imported almost all of its electrical power in the 1990s.

Those of us who know where to find the data (p. 273) could point out to Mr. Klein that Vermont was a net exporter of electricity in 1998, with the vast majority of the electricity produced inside the state borders coming from a single nuclear power plant – Vermont Yankee.

As a direct result of that well-run, virtually emission-free plant, Vermont’s electricity supply was the cleanest in the nation with the following ranks among states (including D.C.) on reported polluting gases.

Sulfur Dioxide 51
Nitrogen Oxide 51
Carbon Dioxide 51

Klein also mentions that Vermont experienced an ice storm in the late 1990s that brought down the transmission line from Hydro Quebec. It took 5-6 weeks for that power line to be restored. During the outage, utilities in the state had to purchase their power on the open market and spent enough to “almost drive them into bankruptcy.”

The state is no less dependent today on power imported from Hydro Quebec than it was then. Some advocate even more imports via transmission lines from that distant power source.

That summarizes the first 30 minutes of the video. I hope it has whetted your appetite enough to encourage you to watch for yourself to see a master salesman explain away his contributions to the creation of Vermont’s fragile power system.

Eduardo Porter says states that close nuclear are going in wrong direction for climate

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In a recent New York Times column titled On Climate Change, Even States in Forefront Are Falling Short, Eduarto Porter begins by lauding California’s claimed position as a leader in environmental consciousness. He points to recent political statements by the state’s elected officials indicating they plan to stubbornly resist any Trump Administration efforts to interfere […]

Three nuclear science deniers express their concerns about climate science denial

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A major reason that climate change skepticism has captured a strong foothold in the United States is that many of climate activists are illogical and inconsistent. They profess grave concern about climate change and call it one of the greatest threats to human civilization on Earth. They adamantly refuse to critically consider the usefulness of […]

NREL Study: Eastern Interconnect Would Strain If 30% Of Annual Electricity Was Solar And Wind

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A high fidelity simulation of the North American Eastern Interconnect known as ERGIS–Eastern Renewable Generation Integration Study–indicates that the system could continue to function in the year 2026, even if as much as 30% of its annual electricity generation and consumption was produced using variable power sources like the wind and the sun. At the […]

Atomic Show #252 – Security, Future of Energy, HEU

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On the evening of April 10, 2016, I met with two good friends and fellow nuclear energy bloggers for a wide ranging discussion about nuclear energy. We talked about the following topics: Nuclear energy’s role in the future of energy supplies Impact of the Nuclear Security Summits initiated by President Obama Demonization campaign being waged […]

The Worth-It Threshold – When gas or gas + renewables is as bad for climate as a coal plant

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The following article dovetails nicely as support for several articles that are in the queue. Those articles will describe a global case of ill-advised groupthink about a future energy supply system consisting of unreliable wind and solar power generation. My interpretation is that the “100% renewables” goal is a seductive mirage that has been carefully […]

Another day, another model “proving” capabilities of weather-dependent power

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On January 25, 2016 the NOAAnews (National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency news) web site published a brief article with the following alluring headline: Rapid, affordable energy transformation possible NOAA, CIRES study: Wind, sun could eclipse fossil fuels for electric power by 2030 As the headline creator hoped, I couldn’t resist reading more. I was shocked, […]

Reliable partnership between natural gas and renewable energy

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Naomi Oreskes is the Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She is also the author of the December 16, 2015 opinion piece published in the Guardian titled There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet. […]

Mark Jacobson describes attributes of his incredibly optimistic wind, water, solar energy plans

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During COP16, Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson described attributes of his team’s most recently produced paper. The abstract leads with the following claim about the paper’s content. This study addresses the greatest concern facing the large-scale integration of wind, water, and solar (WWS) into a power grid: the high cost of avoiding load loss caused by […]