Truly “Green” Energy

Pave the Way! Luke Phillips’s Column

August 11, 2015

Truly “Green” Energy

Out on the San Luis Obispo coast, California’s last nuclear plant- Diablo Canyon- may be breathing its last. The Breakthrough Institute recently published an article detailing the consequences of the plant’s closure. 

“Shuttering Diablo Canyon would have the same impact on carbon emissions as tearing down every wind turbine and rooftop PV panel in California. If Diablo Canyon is closed it will be replaced mainly by fossil fuels because replacing the nuclear power plant with an equivalent capacity of wind and solar would cost upwards of $15 billion compared to about $2.5 billion for a comparable natural gas plant.

The high cost of solar and wind is why, after Friends of the Earth and other antinuclear environmentalists forced the closure of California’s San Onofre nuclear power plant in 2013, Southern California’s power became dirtier, with most of the replacement power coming from natural gas.

Diablo is the workhorse of California’s low-carbon power sector. Its output last year exceeded the electricity produced by the state’s wind turbines by 31 percent and California’s solar electricity by 24 percent. Coming on top of San Onofre’s closure, the loss of the state’s nuclear fleet would wipe out low-carbon generation equal to the output of California’s entire wind, solar, and biomass sectors combined, thus nullifying decades of climate efforts.”

Need more be said?

California has a few energy options on the table right now. Coal is dirty and cheap. Oil and natural gas are less dirty but still cheap. Nuclear is clean and expensive. Hydroelectric is clean and expensive (but there aren’t many more rivers available for damming.) Wind and solar are clean and super-expensive.

Wind and solar are super-expensive because, as those technologies are currently configured, they just don’t provide as much bang for your buck as, say, oil or coal or gas. Or nuclear. Which means that in order to provide, with wind and solar, the equivalent energy a nuclear plant is capable of providing, you’re going to need a lot of wind and solar plants. And that, ultimately, will be more expensive than a single nuclear power plant. You can see why, as the Breakthrough report notes, people reverted back to gas when San Onofre shut down.

Now, this is not to say that there’s absolutely no merit in wind and solar technology- in the future, there may well be, but it will require more research and development. In the meantime, if we’re going to reduce carbon emissions to zero (which would be beneficial for a number of health and environmental reasons besides fighting climate change) we need a more pragmatic strategy.

I outlined such a strategy at NewGeography a few months ago. California- and the United States, really- could use a fleet of highly-advanced nuclear reactors. The money and technical skill are there, and there’s plenty of open land out west available if you want to avoid urban NIMBYism. The benefits are incalculable- carbon-free, abundant, cheap energy for a longer period of time than most would care to think about, complete energy independence, and a booming new sector based entirely in the homeland. And, as I like to say, why harness the power of the sun when you can have the heat of a thousand suns at your disposal here on Earth?

The only sort of government that could carry out a national economic plan of this sort, though, is an activist Hamiltonian one. Current liberal dogma eschews the very mention of any energy plan besides “sustainability” and caps on power use, while conservative ideology opposes the significant government investment and intervention that a comprehensive energy plan would require. Only the big-spending, pro-growth centrist types would seriously consider a proposal like this. And right now, they are next to powerless on the national stage.

If such a nuclear strategy were to take hold, then, it would most likely have to start in one of the fifty states, where lower-stakes politics would grant enterprising centrist politicians more room to maneuver. And it would probably have to be in a blue state, with a political culture already accustomed to big projects and environmentalist rhetoric.

California is arguably the best place to start. Beset as it is with worsening inequality and declining social mobility, no state in the country could more deeply desire a source of cheap, abundant energy. Cheap energy could drive down the cost of housing, utilities, services, transport, and basically everything else, allowing Californians to keep more of their earnings and rise on the socioeconomic ladder.

But moreover, California has already set itself on a crusade to stop climate change. There are echoes of John Winthrop’s “cittie on a hill” speech in that objective, as Governors Schwarzenegger and Brown have sought to catalyze a revolution in climate and energy policy across the country and world by providing a working example of zero-carbon restraint in California.

Predictably, no other states have shackled themselves to stifling cap-and-trade laws, and California’s carbon emissions have not declined significantly. By focusing on propping up presently-unworkable renewables and curtailing the use of energy- and thus economic growth- California is only shooting itself in the foot.

It would be far better if California sought to build a network of nuclear plants out in the Mojave or along the Central Coast. As Breakthrough demonstrates, a single plant can prevent a lot of carbon from being released into the atmosphere. What could five, or eight, or twelve do?

In this model- the Hamiltonian environmentalist model- broad-based growth and opportunity are allies with environmental consciousness. The technology that can bring our economy and infrastructure into the next age of abundance and prosperity is the same technology that can reduce our carbon footprint to zero. We need only be willing to invest in it.

So there you are, Governor Brown. You can save the planet and help Joe the Plumber with the same fell stroke. I hope your successor embarks on that path.