We have to keep nuclear and go for
SMRs, says Michael Liebreich from
Bloomberg New Energy Finance. It is an odd post- he weighs in heavily against
the hopeless technical and financial debacle of the current round of reactor
builds in Europe and the USA, but then says small modular reactors will be fine
and are the way ahead, whereas renewables cannot expand on the scale necessary:
‘The global power sector generated more than 26,000TWh
in total in 2018. Nuclear power provided 10%, according to BloombergNEF. Fossil
fuels contributed 63%, with coal the largest source at 37% and gas the next
biggest at 23%. Taken together, renewable sources delivered 26%, but their
biggest contributor was hydro, at 16% of the total. Wind & solar accounted
for 4.8% and 2.2% respectively - just 7% between them’.
He goes on ‘If your plan to deliver a 20% or 45% emission reduction in the
electrical sector - targeting 2 degrees Celsius or 1.5 degrees Celsius of
warming respectively - is via wind and solar alone, assuming some moderate
level of economic growth, you would have to add two to four times as much
capacity in the next decade as has been added in total in the last two decades.
BNEF’s recently-released New
Energy Outlook 2019 shows
that, while we could hit the lower end of that range, it is highly unlikely we
will hit the higher end of the range on the current trajectory’.
Note that he’s left out hydro &
other renewables, so it’s wind & solar expansion only. They have expanded
by an annual average of 20.8% & 50.2%, respectively,
over the past decade. i.e. doubling in the case of solar, and we might expect
their growth to accelerate, maybe delivering four times as much capacity, maybe
more.
Leibriech says they will have to, so as to also meet the
heat and transport demand- he says that would
mean ‘building an additional 10 to 15
times current installed capacity of wind and solar’ by 2030. That sounds stretching, but not
impossible- and remember we also have hydro and the other renewables, including
direct heat suppliers (e.g. solar, biomass, geothermal CHP). It doesn’t all
have to be done with green electricity.
He admits that energy efficiency could possibly reduce demand growth- but says
only by 25% by 2030. Actually the EU target is 32.5% by 2030 and Germany is
aiming for 50% by 2050. But leaving that aside, he says we will still need a 10
times capacity expansion. Well, bring it on!
If we didn’t spend so much on nuclear we could speed up renewables and
energy saving.
As he says, using the NAO Hinkley
figure: ‘someone please give me a
30-billion-pound subsidy and I could deliver 3.2GW of efficiency improvements
among the UK’s power users; or I could build enough onshore or offshore wind
farms, together with the required interconnections, to deliver 3.2GW of
dispatchable power to the UK; or 3.2GW of natural gas capacity, equipped with
carbon capture and storage; or 3.2GW of dispatchable solar thermal in North
Africa, with an undersea high-voltage direct current cable. Hell, I could
probably build all four!’ But no, he wants to divert money to SMRs, which
he thinks will be cheap and safe. And also to keep the old nuclear plants
going, to delay the huge decommissioning costs. He even looks to fusion.
Basically, he just won’t let go of the nuclear dream: https://about.bnef.com/blog/liebreich-need-talk-nuclear-power/
For good new counter-views of the
economics and on SMR’s see: www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.670581.de/dwr-19-30-1.pdf
and
www.nuclearconsult.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Prospects-for-SMRs-report-2.pdf
And on nuclear waste- the endless
search for the endless site: https://ensia.com/features/radioactive-nuclear-waste-disposal/
Fear of flying
No one is saying that trying to phase
out fossil fuel and nuclear will not
be hard, especially given current rising energy demand in some sectors. Demand
in the UK overall has been falling, electricity
demand especially, but the transport sector may be the hardest nut to
crack, aviation in particular. That could soak up a lot of whatever energy is available,
increasing amounts, including of green energy.
So does it come down to saying, to put
it simply, if you want to keep flying, you have to have nuclear? Not really, or
at least not yet. Although flying usually attracts much environmental ire, aviation’s
share of energy use, and emissions from that, is relatively small at present. Commercial aviation burns a relatively small 2%-3% of the world’s fossil
fuels and currently aircraft cause about 3.5% of global warming from all human
activities. However, demand and emissions are growing. In
Europe aviation emissions have doubled since 1990, and globally they could,
without action, double or treble by 2050. So, unless checked, aviation
emissions may account for up to 25% of the global carbon budget by 2050.
Are there
any solutions? The IEA has talked up technical fixes and
operational changes. However, a 2018 European
Federation for Transport and Environment report said that ‘the expected technology and operations
improvements will not mitigate the expected fuel demand and emissions growth
from aviation. Generating incremental efficiency improvements from current
aircraft designs is becoming ever more costly and difficult. Further
operational improvements remain possible but do not achieve decarbonisation
& require the right policies to be in place. To significantly reduce the
expected fossil fuel demand & ultimately eliminate it from the sector would
require further measures’.
Even if
it was possible to switch to the use of renewable fuels (biofuels, green
hydrogen, and electric propulsion using on board batteries charged with green
power before flight, and so on), continued air transport demand growth could
soak up the lions share of renewable resources. About the best that can be
hoped for, in terms of technical fixes, is that solar
powered battery-assisted flight will prove viable, beyond the small-scale
lightweight systems so far developed.
The bottom line seems to be that, while
the cost of short haul flights, based on untaxed fuel, is so low, demand (and
emissions) will be hard to tame, with technical fixes only offering limited
help. And nuclear? Could that help
directly? Some still dream of (on board) nuclear powered fight, but about the
best you can say that hydrogen (or electricity) produced from nuclear plants
might be used for aviation. A long shot, and not likely to help much. We may
have to limit flying. And also the use of fossil fueled cars- often an even
worse emitter/passenger km. But that’s another story, with EVs not necessarily
being too much help in reducing net environmental impacts, whatever the source
of power. They don’t reduce traffic
congestion, urban blight, the need for more roads and parking spaces, or particulate air
pollution from rubber wheel/road interactions: We need more green-powered trains and trams, as well as cycling
and walking… with none of it needing nuclear.
