Do we have to have nuclear –and planes too?

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.